


The Red Eye

by badjujube



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Crack, Detectives, F/M, Humor, Nonsense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-17
Updated: 2012-05-31
Packaged: 2017-10-29 17:34:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 51,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badjujube/pseuds/badjujube
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's important for any private investigator to maintain a good relationship with local law enforcement and it's representatives. Therefore, I am always cooperative and polite with Chief Swan. Also, I try not to drink his daughter Bella's blood. Language and Masturbation Jokes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Femme Fatale

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: This is beta'ed by the saintly EverlastingMuse. I don't own Twilight, but you probably knew that, right?

Chapter 1: Femme Fatale

Even as a human I loved detective stories. As a boy I snuck the works of Edgar Allen Poe, Wilkie Collins and Arthur Conan Doyle into my room and pored over these while I was supposed to be reading the Romantic poets and the collected works of Shakespeare. Later I read the novels of Raymond Chandler, Dashell Hammett and John MacDonald, often in grubby pulp magazines I had to hide from my siblings so they wouldn't tease me. As if it was porn or something.

I loved the way that the detectives in the stories had flaws, dark pasts, made mistakes and tortured themselves for these mistakes. I loved the way they tried to do the right thing even while hovering in that grey area between the upright world and the seedy underbelly. I liked the way they were able to help innocent people by intervening in that dark world for them, so that they could stay innocent. I like the way they questioned their humanity. I can totally relate.

So when I decided that I wanted to do something to involve myself with humanity in a more interesting way than going to high school for the 20th time I chose to start a detective agency. Despite the fact that I'm a vampire, I'm kind of a natural for this sort of thing because a) I can read minds b) I have vampire skills like a heightened sense of smell, vision, etc. and c) I don't sleep. In fact, at The Red Eye Detective Agency, that's our motto; "We don't sleep". People just take it to mean that we work on their cases tirelessly. But really, it's…well, you get it.

I say "our" motto because I am joined part-time by my sister Alice. She's also a real natural for this field because she's a psychic. Not, like, Miss Cleo, psychic friends network, call her up and ask her about your love life. More like she gets visions of the future and can sometimes "look" for the future of certain people

We also occasionally utilize the skills of our siblings: her husband Jasper because he's a brilliant tactician, having fought in the Civil War, can detect and change emotions and is pretty good on the computer, our brother Emmett because he is the kind of guy that a detective should have around, big and intimidating, although really he's a big cupcake, and his wife Rosalie who's a master mechanic and really the one the bad guys should be scared of. She also makes a good distraction because most human males think she's attractive. If they knew the toxicity of her personality they might think twice, but maybe not. Human males are pretty predictable.

Speaking of predictable, we're so good at solving mysteries that sometimes we have to pretend that it takes longer to solve a case than it really does so we don't make people suspicious. It's also important for us to maintain a really low profile. We have an office in downtown Forks, Washington; population: 3,120 humans, 7 vampires. We stick to pretty small time stuff: cheating spouses, tracking down lost loves, stuff like that. We don't take any cases farther away than Port Angeles usually and if it's anything that is going to attract the attention of the press or any major law enforcement, I pass it off to the Fork's Chief of Police, the inscrutable Charlie Swan.

I am especially careful to always be polite and cooperative and to hide any trace of the supernatural from Chief Swan. It's always important for any private investigator to maintain a good relationship with the local law enforcement and it's representatives.

Also, it would be a bad idea to drink his daughter Bella's blood. Unfortunately, that's easier said than done.

Every great private detective has woman trouble. There's the classic scene where our hero wakes from an alcohol stupor in his squalid office and through the haze of his hangover sees the shapely legs of a femme fatale, a gorgeous woman who will lead him into danger with a hint of her luscious lips and the sway of her curves.

You'll remember that I don't sleep and I can't get drunk so the hangover scene is never going to happen for me. I should also explain that I'm not terribly experienced sexually. By which I mean I have no experience. Emmett accuses me of being gay all the time. The flaw in his theory is that the only thing that is less interesting to me than sex with a woman is sex with a man.

I have this theory that we vampires get stuck in our temperaments when we are changed. Esme was a young mother when she was changed and she has forever been a mother to us, despite the fact that I am, in fact, older than her. Emmett got stuck as a redneck in his early 20s, into hunting, women and raising hell.

So here's what I was fixated on when I was changed:

1) Waiting until I was 18 to join the army and fight in the Great War

2) Pretending to be 18, joining the army and fighting in the Great War

3) Joining the Navy, etc.

4) Joining the Marines, etc

5) Baseball (Go Cubs!)

6) War

7) Whether my mother was going to find the copy of "Sherlock Holmes" stories I had hidden in the back of my dresser

8) War

Which brings me to my present conundrum. I got over my fixation with war the way most kids nowadays get over their fixation with The Doors once they're out of high school. Because neither war nor Jim Morrison are really as cool as they initially seem to the immature adolescent.

I still like the Cubs, even though they haven't won the World Series since I was a human 7 year-old, which is longer than you might think, especially given my boyish good looks. No one is going to punish me for reading detective novels anymore. Especially since Emmett barely even reads. You should hear the way he bitches if we try to watch a movie with subtitles.

But I still hadn't developed the obsession with sex that everyone else in the world had. Which would have been cool if I lived with monks or with some power-hungry coven like the Volturi (more on them later). I mean, those guys are more interested in regulating on vampires and mind-fucking each other than sexual shenanigans. But while in my family Rosalie does kind of control Emmett and Alice does control our wardrobes there's no major power-tripping going on. We pretty much have lots of time to sit around pretending to be human. Which for my siblings and parents means having sex. Loudly. As if I can't hear their thoughts as well.

Which is not to say that I don't have women trouble. Just not in the shape of a curvy blonde with a cigarette dangling from her red lips but a petite, brunette high school senior who likes Jane Austen and milkshakes.


	2. On My Case

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: I don't own it. EverlastingMuse is the marshmallow to my sweet potatoes.

My woman trouble began in the end of October. I was wrapping it up in the office when I got a call from my sister Rosalie, asking me to pick her up an oil filter for our father's car. I get calls for these errands a lot since I work in town. Carlisle and Emmett work in town, too, but Emmett purposefully screwed up the errands he got sent on so many times they don't even ask him anymore. Which leaves Carlisle and I, but because he has a "real job" and because I have too much pride to act as dumb as Emmett it comes down to me. I get a little annoyed when they treat me like the family errand-boy.

"Rose," I whine. "Why can't you ask Carlisle? He's working today, too." I should have known better.

"Because Carlisle works as a doctor while you play Sam Spade all day." Ouch! Rose can be a little harsh, as you can see.

"Fine, but I'm not making any other stops." These errands can get a little excessive with my sisters making requests for beauty products and my mom sending me to the craft store. You have no idea what it's like to be a 110 year-old vampire pretending to be a 20-something man having to ask where the "googly eyes" are.

So I'm walking over to the auto parts place because it's just about a block away from my office when my phone rings again. I ignore it because I am sure that it's just someone else at home asking for hairspray or blank cds. It's a typical windy day in Forks and with it blowing at my back I'm pretty sure that my already crazy hair is looking like a clown wig.

The streets are pretty empty because it's Forks, population: practically nothing, when around the corner comes this teenage girl. She's small, dark-haired and almost as pale as one of us. I prepare myself for the onslaught on teenage mind, a flavor I am way too accustomed to tasting. I pat myself on the back again that I found an alternative to high school this time. The girl glances at me and I try to place her but I don't think I've ever seen her. Which is weird because it is Forks, after all.

I am beginning to wonder why I haven't heard her mind yet and my phone is continuing to ring in my pocket. Then I realize that I hear the sound of my brother's voices in my head and sense them coming near me, fast. At that moment the wind shifts directions suddenly and I smell the most enticing thing I've ever smelled. It's the girl's blood and it's better than any blood I've ever smelled. I haven't drank from a human in 70 years and I'm just about to change that because I don't think I can resist.

My whole body goes into predator-mode and I start to crouch down, the better to spring at her. My mouth fills with venom and I'm sure I look scary as shit. I barely have a chance to think about what's going to happen when I am seized from behind by my brothers.

"Hey, Eddie," Emmett is holding on to one arm while Jasper has the other. "Not so fast." I can feel Jasper sending calm feelings my way. It barely takes the edge off but it clears my head enough for me to realize that I was about to eat a teenage girl out in public. In front of a used bookstore. Bad form.

She has slowed down and is looking at us, wide-eyed, clutching some books to her chest.

"Eddie hates the dentist." Emmett says to her with a smile. "We have to drag him there every time." He laughs. She doesn't.

My brothers start to drag me back away down the sidewalk in the opposite direction and I don't struggle. What the fuck just happened to me? I start to talk but Jasper interrupts. "We'll talk about it at home." he hisses and sends another wave of calm my way. We have turned away from the girl but I take one last look back and see the girl has gotten to the door of the bookstore and has paused with the handle in her hand, still looking at us with curiosity and alarm.

I try once more to probe her thoughts but I can't hear anything from her. My phone is still ringing and Jasper pulls it out of my pocket and answers it.

"Yeah, honey, we got him." He listens for a second. "We'll bring him straight home." He says goodbye and hangs up. He looks at me and raises an eyebrow. "You gonna answer your phone from now on, sport?"

All I can do is stare at him.

I am driving back to the house I share with my family with Jasper and Emmett, without an oil filter, wondering what the hell just happened. I mean, on the surface, I know what just happened. I almost ate a girl on Main Street in Forks. I know I said that before, but I am blown away by the reality of it. If my brothers hadn't come along I would have killed her. I would have blown our cover in the most spectacular way possible.

"Fuck!" I punch my own leg in frustration. Jasper looks at me with concern. Emmett laughs. I shoot him a glare.

"Does anyone mind telling me who the hell that was?" I assume they know since they're being so cool about the whole thing.

"That's Chief Swan's daughter, Isabella. She just started school this week." Jasper says thoughtfully. That poor sucker Jasper let Alice con him into going to high school again with her. Alice just never gets enough prom committee, I guess.

"I saw her and Chief Swan at Thriftway this weekend. Seems like a sweet girl." Emmett says, "Geez, she's just a high school kid, Edward." He is shaking his head at me, laughing.

"A high school kid who almost didn't get a chance to go to Homecoming." Jasper says. I growl at him. I am embarrassed and furious. Why didn't Alice see this sooner? I could have left town or avoided her. How am I going to manage this? I'm going to have to leave town. It's going to break Esme's heart but I can't risk being anywhere near this girl again.

"If it wasn't Chief Swan's daughter maybe we could find to another teenage girl to munch on." Emmett is grinning at me over his shoulder as he gets closer to our house. "Whatsherface Mallory's mom really likes you. Maybe you could do a sex for teenage daughter trade."

"Dude, you've been watching too much 'Secret Lives of American Housewives' or something." Jasper gives Emmett a punch in the shoulder.

"Bro, have you seen 'Desperate Housewives'? Those women are sex-fiends!" Emmett is exclaiming loudly at Jasper, hardly paying attention to the road at all.

"I've never had sex with a human. Have you? Seems like it'd be like stapling jello."

"Nah, man. Too fragile and squishy. Like trying to sand a balloon."

"You guys need to shut up! This is a serious problem. I almost killed that girl!" They turn around to look at me as if they forgot I was there.

"Sorry, man." Emmett and Jasper look embarrassed for a second and then they start giggling. Story of my goddamn endless life.

Thankfully, we arrive at the house and I rush in to find Alice sitting at the kitchen table with Esme and Carlisle. Alice jumps up and immediately starts apologizing.

"Edward, I am so sorry. I didn't see it until Rose called you and then you didn't answer your phone!"

"Thank God nothing happened to that poor girl!" Esme looks alarmed by what happened and Carlisle is staying calm but has his arm around her shoulder.

"What happened?" I look at Alice and Carlisle. Carlisle clears his throat and gestures for me to take a seat.

"Well, it appears that Charlie Swan's daughter is your singer. You know what a singer is, right?" I nod slowly while hearing Emmett's mind wander back decades to a woman he encountered on a country road and before he knew it…

"Stop it, Emmett!" I glare at my brother who has replaced himself in his story with me. I am draining a limp Isabella Swan who's wearing an apron and a housedress and has clothespins falling from her hands to the ground.

"Sorry, buddy." Emmett's shoulders dip slightly. Carlisle looks at me with concern before continuing.

"A singer's blood calls to a specific vampire. I've never heard of anyone resisting their singer but if anyone could, Edward, it's you. She survived her encounter with you today."

"But only because Emmett and Jasper got to me in time. I've got to leave town." I look at Alice, hoping she has some insight into where I should go.

Alice is nodding slowly, her eyes fixed on a distant point. "I…I don't see you leaving, Edward. In fact, it wouldn't help. Once you encountered her you can't get the idea out of your head. It actually puts her in more danger if you leave than if you stay here and try to get acclimated to her scent."

"That's insane! I'm going to have to hang out in the same town as her trying not to kill her! What if I run into her by accident again?"

"If we coordinate we can come up with a plan to know where she is at all times. And we can get items of hers to expose you to her scent." Carlisle looks at Alice who nods.

"Yeah, I see that working. She has a pretty predictable schedule and we can alert Edward if it changes." I see an image come into her head. It's Isabella Swan sitting at a desk in…our office? I look at Alice incredulously. "A job? You're going to hire her?" She shakes her head.

"I don't know, I just see her working for us. I saw it before, maybe a week ago. That's why I had no idea she was going to be a problem."

"There's a big gap between keeping an eye on her so I can avoid her and giving her a job so I'm trapped in the office with her. There's got to be some workplace safety policy on that." I look around the table at my family. They are smiling at me.

"This is crazy! I almost killed a girl and now we're going to hire her?"

"It's not going to happen right away. It's a ways in the future." Alice looks at me reassuringly. "It's going to be OK, Edward. You're not going to hurt her."

"I'm glad you guys feel so good about this. I'm going to go hunt." I look at Rosalie. "You're going to have to get your own oil filter." I walk out followed by my brothers. I guess they don't trust that I'm not going to go back to town and eat Isabella Swan. I'm not sure I trust myself.


	3. Subterfuge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: I don't own it, SM does. Also I don't know if I've mentioned the coolness that is EverlastingMuse, my beta. She's cool. WARNING: flounce-worthy plot twist ahead, just so you know.

So the problem with trying to avoid someone is that the effort you have to put into avoiding them means that you are actually hyper-aware of them because in order to avoid them you have to know where they are. It's the grown-up equivalent of saying, "I'm ignoring you!" All of the steps and precautions that it takes to stay away from Isabella Swan (Bella, I soon hear she prefers) make it so I am able to think of little else.

It's ironic because I know less about her than I've ever known about a teenage girl because I can't read her mind.

Which is another thing that makes me anxious about this whole thing. I can't read her mind. And in the last few weeks while my family has been keeping me apprised of her location I have been torn between my desire to stay away from her and my curiosity about why I couldn't hear anything from her. Was it just that I was so focused on biting her? Or is there something different about her mind?

What I do know about her is that she likes to read. Besides school and the grocery store the only other places she seems to go are the library and the used bookstore downtown. Emmett in particular is intrigued by how much she likes to read, I guess since he's never particularly mastered the skill himself. He has started telling me what books she's reading.

"E. M. Forster, Edward? A Passage to India? Isn't that about a gay guy? Maybe she's doing some research on you." Emmett walks into the office one afternoon about 2 weeks after their surveillance started. He opens up a plastic bag and pulls out a sweater. I am hit by the scent of her coming from the garment in his hand.

"What the hell, Em…" I say as he tosses the sweater at my head. It's clearly something she wore recently and my mouth fills with venom. I leave it on my desk where I had deflected it away from my head when I jumped out of my desk chair.

"It's to help you get desensitized to the smell." Alice walks in and throws herself onto my couch. Emmett sits down on the couch too while I glare at the green pile of cotton on my desk. "Come on, Edward. It'll help. I've seen it." I shoot a glance at Alice.

"What have you seen?" Clearly if she's seen me being able to resist Bella Swan's scent she's seen me closer to her. Which is someplace I have no intention of being.

"Well, I told you I saw her working for us. And I've seen other stuff." Alice won't make eye contact. I try to get a glimpse of what is in Alice's head but she's blocking me with particle physics.

"That's great, Alice. Being evasive right now is just what I need. Maybe you should keep lots of stuff from me and then I can just end up eating the Police Chief's daughter and ruining all our lives." I slump down in the corner, as far away from the green sweater as I can.

Alice and Emmett laugh. "Edward, it's not going to be like that. All I'm hiding is that Bella and I are going to be friends. I just assumed that you would over-react but since you are over-reacting anyway I may as well tell you."

I am feeling embarrassed and I get up and walk back over to my desk, eyeing the sweater. I lean up against my desk and look at Alice. "Friends? Do you think that's wise?"

"It will help us know where she is and to get a handle on the situation. Plus Emmett won't have to sneak into her room as much to steal clothes." She shoots him a dirty look and he cringes. Great. My brother has been looking in a teenage girl's underwear drawer.

"How are you going to do it? I mean, make friends with her?"

"Are you questioning my ability to make friends with another female? Just because you are socially incompetent doesn't mean I am." Alice inspects her nails. "Oh, and I don't know why you can't read her mind. But you definitely can't."

"Get out! Edward! You can't hear her?" Emmett is surprised and amused. I shake my head.

"Nothing. Either she has no thoughts or she's the first person I've ever met that I can't read. Either way, she's like my arch-enemy. She's my Moriarty."

My sister snorts. "You are such a drama queen. It's a good thing I'm getting a new best friend because you are ridiculous." She gets up and grabs her purse. "I've got stuff to do, Sherlock. Don't forget to get those photos of Mr. Banner and that girl who works at the gas station. They'll be in the parking lot of the school tonight."

Alice walks out, leaving me sitting forlornly in my desk. Emmett is looking at me and then he looks down at my hands and smirks. I look down to see Bella Swan's green sweater in my hands. I am clutching the sweater in one hand and stroking it with the other. If I could blush I would. The same holds true of dying of embarrassment.

Alice's plan to befriend Bella Swan works out smoothly, as you would expect, since she must have seen it ahead of time. Because Alice and Jasper are posing as high school seniors it's pretty easy for her to approach Bella.

Alice charms Bella into agreeing to exchange phone numbers. Chief Swan already knows my family because of the dealings we've had with him as well as Carlisle's work at the hospital. I can't say that I'm pleased about Alice's interference with the Swan girl, but there is little I can do.

Alice is able to sneak me items of hers to continue to get my used to the smell of her but she keeps pushing me to start being in proximity to her. She threatens to invite her over for dinner or have her stop by the office. Only with the most petulant of temper tantrums am I able to dissuade her. I'm not proud of acting that way but a girl's life is at stake here, right?

Alice and I are sitting in the office one day discussing surveillance on a client when she brings up her new favorite subject.

"So, I'm going to sleep over at Bella's on Friday. I think I'm going to give her a pedicure." Alice inspects her nails.

"Don't care, Alice. Just keep her away from me." I don't look up from the document I'm typing, a spreadsheet for office supplies. Emmett keeps borrowing the cleaning supplies and then the windows in here are filthy and I don't even know I'm out of Windex. Maddening!

"Edward, I think I should tell you that…"

I cut her off in frustration. "Why don't you use your powers of persuasion to get her to move back wherever she came from? She has a mother, right? Why doesn't she go back there?" Alice shakes her head.

"She's not going to go back to Phoenix. In fact, that's what I wanted to talk to you about…"

Right then Emmett rushes in with a weird, surprised look on his face. He has been spying on Bella at the library again and has run here in a most uncautious way.

"'What to Expect When You're Expecting'? What the fuck?" Emmett turns his face from Alice to me. "Edward, did you know you tried to kill a pregnant teenager?"

"Alice?" I look at her with astonishment. "Bella Swan's pregnant?"

"I was trying to tell you, Edward. You wouldn't let me finish." Alice goes back to inspecting her cuticles.

"How did this happen?"

Emmett laughs. "Well, Edward. Sometimes men like to have sex with women…"

"Shut up, Emmett! That's not what I meant. Does Chief Swan know? She's not even eighteen, is she?"

"She just turned eighteen. I don't know if the Chief knows yet but obviously he will find out eventually. I don't know who the father is, my vision doesn't work in reverse." Alice looks at me curiously. "What's the big deal, Edward? You're not going to hurt her. None of us are."

"It's one thing to invite this girl into our lives, go to sleepovers and paint her toenails or whatever. It's another thing to get involved with a pregnant woman. That's two lives we are putting in danger by being involved with them."

"Edward, almost sixty years and you still don't trust me? I'm hurt." Alice gives me a pout and gets up. "I'm going to the drugstore to get some nail polish remover."

"Yeah, Edward, you're being a dick." Emmett gets up in imitation of Alice's angry flounce. "I'm going to steal all your scotch tape and go to work."

I shake my head as my siblings leave. After sixty years I do know Alice. I know she's going to be planning a baby shower. I try really hard to do my best "What would Philip Marlowe do?" but I doubt he ever had to deal with Alice, pregnant teenagers and office supply theft. This whole private detective thing is turning out way less glamorous than I thought it would be.


	4. Crime Scene

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: Ownership of Twilight hasn't changed since we last spoke. Still not mine. EverlastingMuse, my beta, does own my eternal gratitude for putting up with my constant misspelling and grammatical crimes.

I know I said I liked mysteries, but not this kind of mystery. I'm into the kind of mystery that happens in books or in the movies and is resolved easily. I like the satisfaction of solving a mystery by reading a person's mind or seeing one of Alice's visions. I am thrilled by the kind of mystery that you can solve with some surveillance or reading phone bills or snooping around in a person's desk.

This mystery, on the other hand, is not nearly as much fun. The locked safe of Bella Swan's brain is dangerous and frustrating. She's a delicious smelling human whose death would be a major inconvenience not to mention a personal moral low point and a definite political snafu. She evades logic; she's a studious, shy honor student who doesn't understand the mechanics of birth control? She's an enigma with a hooded "Forks High" sweatshirt and pre-natal vitamins and I am, in humiliating fashion, fascinated by her.

Fortunately, this whole "fascination from a distance" thing was working out OK, kind of like celebrity stalking, until Bella Swan made herself real for me, in startling fashion.

It was the Wednesday after her sleepover with Alice. I was doing my regular thing, you know, sitting at my desk, listening to jazz, sniffing one of Bella Swan's t-shirts, when I hear light footsteps on the stairs followed by a voice in the outer office.

"Hello? Alice? Mr. Cullen?" Who could sneak up on me like that? I hear people's thoughts for Christ's sake! Everyone's thoughts but...shit! It's her!

I jump up vampire-speed and slam the door to my office. I clench my fists and swear at my own awkwardness for a second before saying; "Yes? Can I help you?"

"Uh, Mr. Cullen? I'm sorry to bug you. It's Bella Swan. I'm friends with Alice? I was hoping Alice was around. I, uh, my truck won't start and I forgot to charge my stupid cell phone, of course, and I was hoping I could use your phone?" She sounded half apologetic, half puzzled by my bizarre door slamming.

"I'll meet you out front, Miss Swan. Give me a minute to wrap up this phone call." I knew she'd think I was weird meeting her outside but I couldn't risk being in the office with her.

I waited a minute to make sure she had left and then I glanced in the mirror in the bathroom. I tried to straighten my hair up a little but it just flopped back into its natural disheveled state. Taking a deep unnecessary breath I walked down the stairs. There was part of me that was really excited about finally meeting her. The crazy, masochistic part.

Bella Swan stood on the sidewalk a few doors down from our office in front of her decrepit red truck. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt and her long brown hair covered her face as she stared at her feet. She looked up as I walked out of the building.

"Miss Swan. Nice to finally meet you." I looked at her stomach to see if she was showing yet. Nothing.

She noticed my glance at her stomach and a slight frown appeared on her face and then disappeared as she smiled shyly in greeting.

"Yeah, uh, sorry to bother you, Mr. Cullen, but I was just hoping I could use your phone to call the guy who fixes my truck?"

"Call me Edward."

"Edward. Thanks." I handed her the cordless phone from my office and walked over to her truck. "Do you mind?" I gestured to the hood.

"Uh, no. Do you know anything about cars?" I walked to the cab to find the hood release and popped it.

"I know a little. My sister Rosalie is the mechanic in the family, though."

"Oh." She frowned at me again and then began dialing a number on the phone. I looked at the inner workings of her truck but couldn't see anything obvious. As if one of my vampire powers was some kind of truck repair super-sense.

I was finding Bella's scent tempting but manageable outside; strangely I found myself more intrigued by her actions than her blood. It was surreal and a little bit unnerving to finally interact with this creature whose avoidance I had been obsessed with.

"Hey, Jacob?...This is Bella. My truck isn't starting and I was hoping you could help me out again?" I heard her talking and found myself wishing I had pushed harder to have Rosalie help her. Peculiarly, I wanted to be the one taking care of her. Apparently, pregnant women arouse my protective/controlling side.

She finished her phone call and walked over to me

"Thanks. I just have to wait for the tow truck." She handed me back the phone. I took it from her hand while maintaining my five-foot distance by stretching out my arm. Like a freak.

"I'll wait with you," I said. She frowned again slightly. 'You don't have to do that, um, Edward. I'm sure you have work to do. And Forks is pretty safe, you know." She laughed nervously.

"It's not a problem." I looked at her stomach again, trying to figure out how far along she was. She frowned at me again and I looked away. I couldn't think of anything to say to her. She didn't seem as affected by my appearance as other humans. She was neither afraid of me nor did she seem attracted to me.

"So, you're a private detective?" She was the one who broke the silence.

"Yeah," was my brilliant response. Scintilating, Cullen.

"So do you have a trenchcoat and a fedora? Isn't that standard for a private detective? How about a drinking problem?" She blushed slightly at this last. "I mean, I shouldn't…"

"It's OK," I reassured her. "I don't have a problem with alcohol but my brother does own a bar." It's true. Emmett owns a bar in town. He named it "Liquid Diet". We are a clever lot, we Cullens.

"I have a trenchcoat and fedora, too. They're up in the office." I smile at her. Then I run out of things to say. I just stare at her trying to read her mind. Which I still totally cannot do, by the way.

"Alice says she helps you out? What kind of stuff do you guys do?"

"Mostly little stuff. Missing pets, cheating husbands." I look at her as she scans the road for her tow truck. She seemed uncomfortable. She also seemed cold; she was rubbing her upper arms. All of a sudden I was struck by how pretty she was. It wasn't often that I thought of a human woman that way but she was. Her eyes were large and dark as they peeked out from behind her thick brown hair. The contrast of her pale skin and the faint rose of her cheeks was really lovely. Her lips had a faint pout; the delicacy of her features reminded me of another time, perhaps when I was still alive. She had what had been called a "rosebud" mouth in my time; I could imagine her with her hair piled atop her head in a high-necked blouse in a sepia portrait from a century ago.

I was brought back to reality by the honking of a horn and I realized that I had ignored the signs of her discomfort from the cold and had been staring at her for longer than was socially acceptable. And, just in case that wasn't bad enough, the tow truck that was pulling up behind her vehicle was being driven by a fucking wolf. Great.


	5. Red Herring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: Let me take this opportunity to mention that I own neither "Twilight" nor "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". Also, that EverlastingMuse is made of awesome.

To add to Bella Swan's total inappropriateness she also apparently has a werewolf for a mechanic. The tow truck that pulled up behind her truck was a battered, yellow mess with a faded decal on the side that said "La Push Garage". It was being driven by a man in his 20's and in the passenger seat was a teenage boy. They were Quileute and they were pissed to see me.

I should explain that the local reservation was part of a tribe that was rumored to be descended from wolves. I don't know about the ancestry part but they were definitely shape-shifters. The gene that made their young men turn into werewolves was evidently activated by exposure to vampires. So we move to Forks, they sprout fur. You can see why Bella's choice of mechanic might be a bit tricky for me.

The werewolves consider themselves to be our natural enemy and although my family has a treaty with them they still don't really like us around. We stayed out of each other's way for the most part, but this was about to get awkward. There was no way that I was into letting Bella hang around with teenage werewolves. They are way too volatile, for one thing. Also, they stink.

I stood on the sidewalk, returning the glare of the older man while the teenage one jumped out of the truck and ran over to Bella.

"Bella, are you alright?" Teen-wolf gave me a glare as he hovered over her. I gave him my best "I'm a hundred years older than you" arrogant look. The other smelly one began hooking Bella's truck up to the tow truck.

"Yeah, Jacob. Have you met Edward Cullen?" She gestures politely to me, ignoring or oblivious to our supernatural glare-fest. "Edward let me use his phone."

"We've never met, no." I don't want to shake his paw so I give him nod from my comfortable distance. "A pleasure, Jacob." I chose not to mention his resemblance to his grandfather. Who I met in the 1930's. I amuse myself by imagining Jacob dancing the Charleston to "Yes, We Have No Bananas."

"How do you know Edward?" The other hairball has walked over at this point.

"Sam, this is Edward Cullen. Have you met?" Sam looks at me with suspicion and shakes his head. "No, but his reputation precedes him. How do you know each other?"

"Alice is a friend of mine. When my truck wouldn't start and my cell phone was dead, Edward was kind enough to help me." Bella is starting to pick up on the animosity between the animals and I. She is watching them carefully. They are too busy trying to intimidate me by flexing their muscles and sneering at me. Typical wolves. I hate them.

"Generous," Sam says with a sneer. "Let's go Bella, we'll drop you off." I am not thrilled by them dropping her off but I can't risk offering her a ride. I'm afraid being trapped in my Volvo with her might just be pushing my luck. I wish Alice was here to give her a ride. I realize that I could play this to my advantage by being the magnanimous one.

"Thank you so much for your help, Jacob, Sam." I nod to the two of them, to their surprise. Bella turns to me with a small smile. "Thank you for your help, Edward. Tell Alice I said 'Hi', OK?" She grabbed her backpack from the cab of the truck and squished into the tow truck with the wolves while I watched, my best fake smile pasted on, suppressing a growl.

I gave a last casual wave and walked back up to the office. I was somewhat heartened by the fact that I didn't eat her, while I was frustrated by finding out that she consorted with werewolves.

Which, if I were in my right mind would not be disconcerting. The werewolf thing could work to my advantage if I couldn't control myself with her. They would have been thrilled to protect her from me. So my displeasure at her fuzzy pals was illogical.

I was getting nowhere with my thoughts so I picked up the mystery novel Esme had gotten me. About this Swedish journalist. It was pretty good except that the guy was kind of promiscuous. Seriously, the guy slept with like 3 different women before the book was halfway over. And he was completely indiscriminate, too. Older women, younger women, whatever. Who would have guessed it about the Swedes, huh?

Overall, I was feeling pretty successful after my non-lethal interaction with Bella Swan. Until she talked to my sister the next day at lunch.

So I'm feeling like quite the social success until Alice walks into the office the next afternoon. I can tell from the look on her face and the tenor of her thoughts that some fun is about to be had. I suspect it will be at my expense. The only thing I can be thankful for is that Emmett isn't here. Alice smirks at me.

"Oh, I called him. He'll be here in a minute. Plus he's out of receipt tape at the bar." Whoever's idea it was to turn Emmett into a vampire so he could steal from me for eternity is going to pay.

"I got stuff to do. Important vampire stuff." I grab my keys and start to walk out the door to escape the "trash Edward" party but Emmett chooses that moment to block my office door with his bulky ass and Alice says: "I talked to Bella Swan today."

I sit back down at my desk, feigning nonchalance. "Oh? Did she mention that she came by yesterday and I didn't eat her?"

"She mentioned that she came by yesterday and met you." Alice grins at me and blocks her evil little thoughts with a Beach Boys song in Arabic. Have I mentioned that I hate the Beach Boys?

"Yeah, what's she think of our boy detective?" Emmett is filling his pockets from the supply cabinet.

"Emmett, not those pens! Those are like three dollars each! Your skuzzy bar patrons are just going to steal them." I look back at Alice. I don't want to have to press her for information. I won't ask. I won't.

"What did she say?" Ok, I did it. Alice smiles.

"Well, I had to mention it to her. I guess she wasn't going to tell me. She said she was concerned that she had…bothered you." I am trying to figure out what she's implying as she says this with a smirk. Then I see the conversation she had with Bella and cringe.

"What? What did I miss? What?" Emmett is looking between the two of us curiously. Thank God he can't read minds.

"Bella thought Eddie was spanking the monkey," Jasper says as he walks in, placing a kiss on his wife's cheek. She gives him a swipe. "Jasper! Don't embarrass him!"

Too late. Emmett roars with laughter. "Edward? She thought he was mangling the midget?" Jasper and Emmett are laughing so hard I'm concerned for the state of my couch. Esme got me that couch in Italy.

"Funny, guys, funny." I glare at Alice. She shrugs her shoulders.

"What? You slammed the door when she came up the stairs. What was she supposed to think? Plus, she didn't say it so much as imply it."

"Did you imply back to her that I did it so I wouldn't be tempted to drink her snotty teenage blood?" I sneer at Alice. She shakes her head at me.

"Of course not, I said that you probably had a lot of confidential files out."

"Not to mention some of her clothes," Emmett says and he and Jasper crack up again. I wave my hand dismissively at all of them and grab my keys to go out again.

"She said she thought you were handsome." Alice's voice stops me in my tracks. I don't care, I don't care, I don't care…

"Yeah?" I say, turning around. And then I hear the other word that Alice doesn't repeat. I can see Bella Swan in my sister's head, blushing as she says "handsome but…weird." I nod at Alice. "Thanks, Alice."

"So I think that I should have Bella over. You know, like a sleepover or something." To my brothers' credit, both of them look at her like she just suggested inviting a human with really appetizing blood over to a house full of vampires for a sleepover. Which she just did. Hence their shocked expressions.

"Alice, I don't know…" Jasper is trying to dissuade her without getting himself in trouble with the person who has sex with him.

"Seems kinda risky, Alice. I mean, what if Wardo eats her?"

"Thank you, Emmett." I give him a pleased look. "Smartest thing you ever said. But don't call me 'Wardo', please."

"He won't because you guys will keep an eye on him." Alice nods at Jasper and Emmett.

"I don't know, Alice. Rosie won't like it." Emmett only fears one thing in this world. Rosalie won't like it. The only thing that Rosalie likes less than new people being around is new human female people being around.

"That's a great point, Emmett." I look at Alice nodding vigorously. "Did you hear what Emmett said, Alice? Rosalie is going to be angry if you bring a human girl over for a sleepover."

"Well, it's just that her dad's going to be out of town for the weekend and I don't want her to get lonely."

"She's knocked up at 17, Alice. If you ask me, she probably could have used a little more 'alone time'." Alice glared at me.

"Yeah, she tell you who knocked her up, Alice?" Emmett was amusing himself by rolling receipt tape across the floor and then catching it as it rolled back. I contemplated giving him a ball of yarn.

"No. I'm trying to respect her privacy. She hasn't even told me about the pregnancy yet." I see a vision in Alice's head of her and Bella in Port Angeles at a book store. "I guess were just going to do something on Friday afternoon."

"Thank you, Alice." I look in her eyes as I thank her so she can see how sincere I am. She smiles at me slyly. It makes me nervous but I really do have stuff to do so I pick up my keys again and say goodbye to my siblings.

Emmett cuffs me on the shoulder as I walk out and shouts at me: "Hey, Eddie. Don't worry. We'll tell your girlfriend that the last time you wrestled the gator was to a photo of Mary Pickford, ok?"


	6. Set Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: EverlastingMuse is my sparkling apple cider on New Year's Eve.

I have to admit, despite the ribbing I took from my siblings and the fact that Bella thinks I'm weird, I am still feeling like I'm getting this whole "not killing the chief's daughter" thing under control. Which is great because I've been spending a near obsessive amount of time worrying about it and not nearly enough time drumming up business.

Not that Alice and I need the money. Living for decades or centuries, not needing to eat or worry about medical bills and the like and living with a psychic and a mind reader, we are pretty well off. But I want our agency to have a good reputation, even if all we can take are small-time cases like missing pets and wandering spouses.

I am talking with a divorce attorney I know from Seattle about a potential case when Alice runs in and hands me a set of keys. It is the afternoon of her play date with Bella, and I look around her in fear that the appetizing Miss Swan is going to follow her up the stairs.

"Can you drop Bella's truck off at her Dad's?" Alice asks me and I nod, still listening to the lawyer drone on about the case. I am immensely grateful that they are not taking Bella's deathtrap to Port Angeles.

When I finally get off the phone, wanting to scrub my ears with bleach after hearing what the divorce lawyer said about his client's soon-to-be ex-wife, I go downstairs and get into Bella's truck. It is strangely satisfying to be surrounded by her scent without her actual presence there to endanger her. I drive slowly, inhaling her and taking the time to steal one of her gloves so I have something to smell later. Purely for safety purposes, of course.

I park the truck outside Chief Swan's and walk up the drive to give the keys to her dad. Unfortunately, I was so busy wafting in on Bella's heavenly scent that I failed to notice the distinct aroma of rotten dog coming out of the little house.

Until it hit me as the Chief opened the door, that is. Then I was faced with the stoic mustachioed face of Fork's finest along with the deadly glare of two of La Push's smelliest. Chief Swan was watching ESPN with a werewolf and a might-as-well-be-one-for-the-way-he-was-glaring-at-me.

And here I was, whistling my way up the path without a care in the world, twirling her keys around my finger with one of her little knit gloves in my pocket, paying no attention to the mongrels in the house. Sucker.

"Mr. Cullen." Chief Swan greets me. I think I hear a growl from behind him.

"Chief Swan, I apologize for disturbing you. My sister and your daughter went to Port Angeles together and she asked me to bring Bella's truck by." I hold out the keys to him. I can hear the thoughts of the mutts behind him. They are less than thrilled by Bella's choice of friends. I tend to agree.

"Thank you, Mr. Cullen. I wasn't aware that Bella knew your sister." Charlie's mind is not as silent as Bella's but it's quiet. All I can hear is slight confusion but no specific words or pictures. The wolves, on the other hand, are having some pretty specific thoughts about my family and our viability as campfire logs.

"Yes, Sir, I believe they have become friends." I don't bother with responding to the wolves threats. It's not like they'd do anything in front of Charlie, anyway. "I won't disturb you further, Sir. Have a good evening." With that I turn and walk back down to the street and walk the few blocks to my office. Where I take the time to sniff her glove. In the most non-creepy way possible.

I am contemplating whether I want to listen to Coltrane or Monk when Carlisle comes into my room the next day. I can see that something's up; he's got wolves on the brain.

"What now? It's not time for the Westminster Dog Show again?" He shakes his head somberly.

"The tribe has asked to meet with us at a neutral location tonight. I gather it has something to do with Chief Swan's daughter?" We haven't necessarily been 100% transparent with Carlisle about how much Alice has been getting involved with Bella. What started out as a mere surveillance project to protect her from me has turned into the first friendship Alice has ever had outside the family.

"I should have foreseen it, Carlisle. I've run across the wolves a few times lately. I imagine they're worried about her." Thinking about it, I can't really blame them.

We meet up with several members of the tribe that evening. Since they appear in their human forms and are not thinking about immolating us we stay pretty calm as well.

"It's been brought to our attention that some members of your family have befriended Isabella Swan." The man who spoke to us was not the man I'd seen last night in a wheelchair at Chief Swan's house but another of the older men in the tribe, Harry Clearwater. The young man, Sam, who had been driving the tow-truck stood next to him, staring me down as Harry spoke to Carlisle.

"My children mean no harm to Miss Swan. We do not feed from humans and we would not accompany her places in public if we intended to do so. To do so would draw unnecessary attention to us."

"I understand your family has a different diet than most of your kind but Isabella has ties to the tribe and it concerns us when she associates with any dangerous creatures." I want to interrupt at this point, feeling that the wolves themselves are just as dangerous but I am forced to remember my thirst for Bella's blood which, while certainly less now, is still a danger to her.

"I appreciate your concern. How would you have us proceed?" Harry looks at the young man next to him and nods.

"We will protect Bella." Sam is speaking to Carlisle but looking at me. "We will patrol her home and protect her as one of our own. You have helped her and we thank you for that but we can take over now. It will be safer that way." Alice utters a little cry and Jasper slips his arm around her. Carlisle looks at her and then at me. He is going to make me make this decision. I am torn between what I want and what I know is the right thing to do. After a long pause I nod at him. I hate to admit it but really the wolves are the best ones to protect her, especially from me.

Carlisle looks at Alice and murmurs an apology to her. He turns back to Sam and Harry. "Very well. We will maintain our distance from Miss Swan." He shakes hands with them although they wince at his touch.

We turn to return home solemnly with the exception of Rosalie, who really just doesn't care. When we get to the house Alice finally looks at me with a look of deep sadness and hurt. "How could you?" she says quietly. I open my mouth to explain how I am doing the noble thing, the safe thing, the right thing. Nothing comes out and I turn from her look of anguish and go upstairs to my room and back to my empty life.


	7. Protection Racket

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: I totally do not own "Twilight" or it's characters. I do, however, have a cat with a plastic cone around his neck as well as an awesome beta, EverlastingMuse.

We miss Bella Swan. I refuse to admit it out loud but I'm sure that Jasper can feel it. I know he can feel the effects of our exile from her life in Alice. Alice is simply not herself, Christmas is a shadow of its former glory and my sister spends more time than usual looking off into the distance. It turns out the wolves block my sister's visions so she can't even tell what's happening with Bella. I feel bad for her but have to remind myself daily that we are doing the safest thing for Bella by staying away.

This is small comfort when we hear that Bella has taken a job at Newton's sporting goods. I know that Alice and I both look at the empty reception desk and picture her there. I am especially alarmed because I have heard the thoughts in Michael Newton's puny head and they are not very respectful to women.

It's downright painful when, after a few more months, Bella's growing stomach is detected by some observant teenage girls and her pregnancy becomes the talk of Forks. Chief Swan remains taciturn but I can read the concern in his head and Alice's stolen glimpses of Bella at school show her somewhat isolated from the other students. She hasn't exactly been ostracized but there is a malicious edge to the interest many of the students show her. A few kind students remain friends with her but I can tell from Jasper's head that she is uncomfortable. I know that Alice wants to be able to be her friend, protect her from the stares and the teasing, but won't defy Carlisle. And I know she blames me for agreeing to this.

After about a month of this I start doing surveillance on their surveillance, just to make sure they were doing a good job. I have to be really careful that they wouldn't detect me anywhere near them or make sure it was someplace I had good reason to be.

Which is why, three months after the agreement, Emmett and I found ourselves going to Newton's Sporting Goods.

Let me explain, just so I don't sound like more of a stalker than I already am, we are regular customers of Newton's. Our frequent "camping trips", a necessity to explain why my siblings miss so much school and to facilitate our al fresco dining preferences, mean that, even if we're not going to use them, we need to shop for tents, sleeping bags, tent stakes and the like on a regular basis. We even buy that creepy freeze-dried food, although it is the only thing less appetizing than fresh human food, and usually Emmett and I end up throwing it at each other.

So a trip to Newton's was totally justified and, since we had been staying away from Bella, there was no way for me to know that she always worked until 9 pm on Wednesdays.

At least that's what I told the two teenage boys hanging out outside Newton's.

"Besides, we have an illusion to maintain among the humans. Surely you understand. I mean, you probably have to buy a lot of dog food and flea collars so you tell everyone you have lots of pets, right?" One of the furry teenagers growls at me while the other one just kind of looks at me curiously, wondering why my family and I were having anything to do with Chief Swan's daughter. Then he's thinking: "Thank God they don't know what happened to Emily."

Before I can stop myself I'm asking him, "What happened to Emily?" Emmett looks at me curiously before saying: "Yeah, what happened to Emily?" and looking menacingly at the boy.

The boy gets a picture of a young woman, clearly from the reservation, with several deep scars on one side of her face. I swear, they're animals. Literally. One minute your talking to some smelly guy, the next minute you've got a wolf the size of a Ford Taurus breathing down your neck.

"Seth, you don't have to tell these over-grown mosquitoes anything," the older boy says. Seth thinks about how angry I look and is grateful that I don't know about Jacob phasing in front of her.

At which point I blow up.

It isn't easy to convince Carlisle to go to the local kennel/reservation and convince them that we should be on Bella duty from now on. We encounter a bit of a diplomatic crisis, our own little Forks "Bay of Pigs". Fortunately, Alice and I have Jasper and Emmett on our side. Jasper is game because he wants to see Alice happy and she hasn't been happy since she had to cut off communication with Bella. Emmett jumps on the bandwagon because he thinks that life is a lot more amusing with Bella around.

Esme even comes down on our side because she thinks that I have a romantic interest in Bella. Ha! As if! I laugh loudly at her just to show her how ridiculous she's being.

Anyway, we are able to convince Carlisle to try to convince the pack that we are better Bella-sitters than they are. He makes a smart call when he insists that I stay at home while he talks with them because I can be kind of a dick about this stuff. They aren't exactly eager to do this but after reminding us about the terms of the treaty they reluctantly agree to let us hang out with her again. According to the agreement we are supposed to share her which I can see being a little hard. It's been a century since I was in kindergarten. I don't share very well.

Without an actual threat (beside the usual vampires and werewolves, of course) we don't really have an excuse to lurk around Bella but Alice was relieved to be able to hang out with her again and Emmett picked up his surveillance duties eagerly.

I'm getting prepared to do all that sweater-sniffing all over again so that I can be around her when Alice lets me know that she's coming over after school.

"I thought you might want to be around, you know, make sure she's ok and everything." Alice calls me from school to let me know.

"It doesn't seem very safe. I haven't been close to her in three months. All my acclimation is worn off." I want her to talk me into it.

"Practically the whole family will be there, Edward. Anyway, it's safe, I haven't seen anything."

I agree to be in the house but not in the same room, mostly out of curiosity, and leave the office early. Predictably, Emmett is thrilled to finally meet her.

I decide to hang out in my room and eavesdrop on their conversation. Esme is so excited about having her over she's decided to make appetizers and even Rosalie has started to take some interest in Bella. She and Emmett are hanging out in the kitchen listening to Bella and Alice talk.

I end up having to creep down the stairs because without the ability to hear her thoughts and the talking of my family it's hard to hear her voice.

I quickly realize that things are tense, however.

"I understand that you were just doing what you were supposed to, but it hurt my feelings to have you just ignore me like that, Alice. Especially when the whole school found out about…" In Alice's head I see Bella gesture to her stomach. While I wouldn't say she's enormous or anything she is clearly about six months along and her stomach looks pretty big compared to the rest of her tiny frame.

"Bella, I'm sorry. I wish I could explain. I really want to be your friend and I'm sorry that I abandoned you when you needed one." Alice is getting pretty upset and Jasper is trying to calm her down from in the next room.

"Just so you know, I know about all the…blood drinking and wolves and stuff." WHAT! The thoughts of my whole family blend in with mine. I clutch the banister of the staircase while Emmett, Rosalie, Esme and Jasper all rush into the living room.

"What are you talking about?" Alice is trying to play it off but the fact that my entire family has rushed into the room kind of makes it a meaningless gesture.

"I don't have a problem, Alice. In fact it kind of explains why your brother is such a freak." Emmett laughs and Alice whispers to Bella, "You know, he can hear you." I hear a "Sorry, Edward!" from Bella and decide that there's no point in me hiding on the stairs anymore.

"It's ok," I say, walking into the living room. She smiles at me hesitantly, obviously embarrassed that she called me a freak.

"I know it's supposed to be this big secret but once I saw Jacob turn into an enormous wolf I guess the vampire thing was easier to accept." Bella seems pretty calm.

"They told you?" Jasper asks her.

"Well, Jacob did. He felt pretty bad about turning into a big, hairy dog in front of me so he started telling me how it's all your guys' fault anyway. Speaking of which, how many of you are there?" We all realize that we have been standing around the living room staring at her.

"Well, you know Edward and Jasper." Alice begins introducing Esme, Emmett and Rosalie and we take seats on the couch.

"You have to know that it's very dangerous for you to know about us." Jasper looks at Bella with concern.

"I'm not going to tell anyone, like anyone in this town talks to me anyway." We look at her with surprise and she points to her belly again. "I'm kind of wearing a big scarlet "P" on my chest. I'm not really seen as a good influence on teenage girls."

"That's ok, I'm not really a teenager." Alice laughs.

"Eddie is though. You probably want to stay away from him." Emmett grins and I give him a glare.

"Yeah, maybe you want to pass that on to him. I saw you outside my work twice last week." She looks at me suspiciously. I wish I could read her mind. No wonder she thinks I'm a freak, though. I try to think of possible explanations for my presence in front of her work. I got nothing.

"Small town," I say, shrugging my shoulders. Nice cover, Cullen.


	8. Rear Window

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: I don't own it. If I did there might have been less stalking. But since there was, I'm going with it. EverlastingMuse beta'ed it but the content is my fault.

I don't know if Alice knew what she was doing when she told me that Chief Swan was going to be out of town this weekend. I found myself…worrying about her. Despite the fact that I was probably the biggest danger to her in town I couldn't stop thinking about all the things that could possibly happen to a pregnant teenager left alone all weekend. She could fall and hurt her head, she could miscarry, she could be attacked by hobos. My imagination knew no bounds when it came to coming up with creative misfortunes that could befall her. Not once did her getting eaten by a moody, normally vegetarian vampire/private detective occur to me.

I obsessed on it all week before deciding that I could keep an eye on her without getting close enough to be tempted by her/creeping her out. I had no idea where this desire to protect her was coming from. I still had moments when I cursed her existence because of the anxiety it caused me. But since she did exist and Alice insisted that she could not be convinced to go away I felt obliged to protect her. I have no idea why. I was getting kind of obsessed.

Alice knew what I was doing as I slipped out of the house to go to Bella Swan's on Saturday afternoon. I could see the image of me in my sister's head, crouching in a tree outside the Swan house, fixated on an upstairs window.

I looked at her warily, not knowing how she would respond. But my sister only gave me an imperceptibly slight nod and went back to her conversation with our mom.

I lurked in the woods behind Bella Swan's house until dark and then I moved to the tree outside her bedroom window. At least I assumed that it was hers as the Chief didn't seem the purple bedspread type. She had stayed in the house all afternoon, doing homework, cleaning, cooking some pasta and eating it at the kitchen table while she read "The English Patient". I could hear the sound of her steady heartbeat and her barefoot steps moving around the house. I strained to hear the second heartbeat. I wondered when she was due; and how this had happened to her.

Around ten o'clock she went to bed, reading for a while before turning out the light next to her bed. I had found it surprisingly interesting watching her read, her face changed expression in an intriguing way as she responded to what she was reading. This was a response I couldn't recall having had to any creature before. I was fascinated.

As she switched out the light next to her bed she gave a sigh. She was quiet for a few minutes and then I was appalled and embarrassed to hear soft sobs coming from her through the window. I wanted to leave to give her some privacy, I wanted to stay to protect her.

Grotesquely, I wanted to comfort her. How exactly would I do that? Would I knock on the door, greet her casually? "Hi, It's me, Edward the Weirdo. I heard you crying and assume it's because you're going to have to get your prom dress in the maternity department. Would you like a hug? Oh, wait, I can't hug you because I might not be able to resist drinking your blood."

Not such a hot plan, Cullen.

Then I remembered Alice and before I could get my phone out it buzzed with a message from Alice. Don't worry. I got this.

A phone rang in the Swan house and Bella's light went on and she dragged herself out of bed. She found her cell phone and answered it.

"Hey, Alice….no, it's not too late. I'm glad you called." Bella sat on the edge of her bed and spoke to Alice for a few minutes about trivial things. Still, it seemed to cheer her up and by the time she got off the phone and turned the light back on she was able to fall asleep quickly without any more tears.

I watched her sleep through the window for the rest of the night. I could smell her faintly but I had become used to it enough in the past months to not feel tempted with the glass and ten feet between us. Watching her felt pretty stalkerish but it also felt peaceful. The silence of her mind and the soothing sounds of her heartbeat and regular breathing were enjoyable. She was incredibly beautiful as she slept; her dark curls spread out on her pillow, her lips parted slightly and her dark lashes feathery against the paleness of her skin. I grimaced as I realized that I would no longer have a good excuse to do this once her father returned.

It was a disorienting feeling to discover yourself hooked on watching a teenage girl sleep in addition to your other creepy habits, like drinking blood, not sleeping and reading minds.

My new hobby seemed like something Emmett would have a field day with. I have to keep him from knowing. Especially since I didn't think I wanted to stop.

I think I could have gone on forever the way things were. Working in my office during the day, reading my mystery novels at lunch, hunting in the evening before watching the local pregnant teenager sleep at night. We all have our routines, especially lonely, single vampires.

I could have continued to hold Bella Swan in high esteem for the silence of her mind and her pre-Raphaelite beauty while assuming that, were things different, she would hold me in equal esteem. She would have appreciated my love of reading, the many languages I spoke and my dedication to my family. We could have held hands while walking through downtown Forks. She could lay her head in my lap while we read the Sunday paper, she would have been impressed that I could complete the New York Times crossword puzzle in 30 seconds, in pen no less. I would have read her baby's mind to tell her how it felt. She would offer to name it after me, regardless of sex (Edwina Swan? Edwina Cullen?). Before I knew it I had gone from wincing when her name was mentioned to picking out china patterns. Not that I ate.

I had actually developed an interesting fantasy relationship for the two of us before I even realized how idiotic I was being. I spend 90 years of immortality having zero interest in women and all of a sudden I'm daydreaming about a pregnant teenager whose blood I want to drink? I wondered if it was the equivalent of a wine connoisseur admiring the provenance and label of an especially prized bottle of wine. But then when I imagined drinking her blood it was no longer with relish but with dread and sadness. As Emmett would say; "WTF?"

In a fit of masochism I decided to make a list of all the reasons that I was being ludicrous in my fixation on Bella Swan. I got out all my colors of dry erase marker so that I could color code my list of objections. The white board in the office boasted a list entitled "Reasons why I need to stay away from Bella Swan"

I wanted to eat her.

I could potentially want to eat her baby.

I lived with other vampires who could potentially want to eat her.

I was a soulless, immortal monster.

I had a body that was slightly below ambient temperature.

I belonged to a species that wanted to eat her.

I was a virgin; she clearly had experience.

I could hurt her if I wasn't careful.

I was a stalker.

She had little or no interest in me.

I was 90 years older than her.

I lived with Emmett, who was an idiot.

I could go on but what would be the point? It was pathetic. Unfortunately, I left my list up too long and Emmett saw it, doubtless when he was stealing hand sanitizer from the office supply cabinet and I had to give him free access to our supplies for a month in exchange for his silence.

So you can imagine my frustration when I heard that she was going to prom with Mike Newton. I mean, I know that I couldn't reasonably prevent her from going to her prom. That kind of thing was important to humans. And Alice. And it's not like she would want to go with me, the slightly creepy, ostensibly 20 year-old local private detective. But it didn't mean that I wasn't jealous.

Reveling in her first friendship outside the family, of course Alice and Bella got ready together at our house. And, of course I had to lurk around like a creep. Pretending to be utterly disinterested in seeing how she looked in her voluminous prom dress.

In case you're wondering; she looked beautiful.

Alice had outdone herself. She had Bella in a midnight blue, high-waisted dress which really minimized the fact that she was six months pregnant and made the most of her pale skin and dark hair. The nice thing about infallible vampire memories is you can look once and hold onto the image as if you were staring.

Ok, I might have stared a little bit too. Subtly.

Thankfully, Mike Newton didn't pick Bella up at our house but met them at a restaurant in Port Angeles instead.

I exercised the restraint necessary to not follow them because my sister and brother were with them ensuring a) she was safe and b) they would know about it and mock me if I did.

I stayed at home, playing my piano and making conversation like a non-stalker until Alice and Jasper arrived home at 10:03 pm.

At which point I wigged out.

"Where's Bella? Did you leave her there with that teenage pervert?"


	9. Dizzy with a Dame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: EverlastingMuse is my excellent beta. Neither of us own Twilight.

I'm sure my family would think I was being overly protective of Bella but they haven't had to peek into the minds of thousands of teenage boys, including the particularly repugnant teenage boy in question.

I drive the Volvo at an unsafe speed into town and walk around campus to the romantic Forks gymnasium. I decide that parking in the front makes me more incognito. It's hard to identify her scent in the swirl of perfume, shoe polish, hairspray and smuggled booze.

But I can see Bella's beautiful face in Mike Newton's filthy mind and I track them to his car, which is parked in the back parking lot. I try to move at an acceptable speed but it's difficult when I see that Bella is uncomfortable.

"You know, Mike, I really don't feel that way about you. Do you mind taking me home?" She is trying to be polite but I can see the discomfort on her face.

"Come on, Bella, just a kiss? It's not like I'm gonna get you pregnant." Mike laughs at his own joke. "Seriously, you owe me. Who else were you gonna get to take you to prom?"

I reach Mike's car and without a thought to appearances or propriety, I pull open his door and drag him out by the collar. I have him several inches off the ground and am growling in his terrified face.

"I could hear her saying 'no' from across the parking lot, Newton." It comes out in a growl. "You have a problem with your hearing?" Mike Newton is too scared to even respond. At least verbally. He does, however, wet himself and shake. Which tells me he got the message.

By which point Bella has gotten out of the car and come around to the driver side. And she's screaming at me. At me?

"Goddammit, Cullen, let him go! Are you crazy?" I lower Mike back to the ground and turn to look at her. She is furious, her nostrils flared and if she shot lasers out of her eyes I'd be a dead man. Well, an already dead man with serious laser burns.

"Get out of here, Mike," she says to Newton, barely even looking at him. He shakily gets into his car while Bella and I glare at each other. He only drops the keys three times before getting them into the ignition and driving off.

When he's gone she shakes her head at me disdainfully. "Jesus, Cullen, stalk much?" She looks beautiful, even pissed off at me.

"Oh, did you want me to leave you there with Newton and his…hands?" I can't believe she has no gratitude for my saving her from him.

"I know how to say 'no,'" she snaps at me. "Really?" I ask, lifting an eyebrow at her and glancing at her stomach. She almost laughs but then she looks around the parking lot.

"Where's your car? You didn't turn into a bat and fly here did you?" She looks at me with fake horror before rolling her eyes at me and starting to walk away.

"Bella, wait!" She stops and turns but comes no closer. "You're not going to walk home? My car's in front." I gesture towards the front of the school.

"You think I'm getting in a car with you?" Point taken.

"Let me walk with you." She looks at me for a minute. "Come on, Bella. If anything happens to you the wolves are gonna blame us whether we are involved or not."

"Ok, but don't talk to me. I'm hungry and crabby." She turns and starts walking again and I catch up to her.

We walk for a few minutes and then she says, "So is that why you keep showing up?"

"Yep," I lie.

"Well, I guess I'm sorry for accusing you of stalking me or whatever." She looks a little bit embarrassed. I could tell her that she's totally right but I don't. Don't judge me.

"Well, I guess I'm going to have to find a new job," she says.

"Really? Why don't I just apologize to Newton for making him…soil himself." I am horrified to be having this conversation with a lady. Yay, Victorian upbringing!

"It's not about that. I don't want to work with him after he was such a douche!" Bella looks at me with scorn. "Would you want to work with someone who was slobbering on you like that?" If it was her I would but I keep that tidbit to myself. Bella Swan is clearly, as they say, just not "into" me.

"Oh. Yeah. I guess you have a point." We walk for a few more minutes in silence. The sensation of being with another person and having it be silent was a delicious sensation. So of course I talk and screw it up.

"Can I get you something to eat? 7-11 is still open. I could get you ice cream and pickles or whatever." She looks at me curiously.

"How old are you, Edward?"

"One hundred and ten." I look at her for a reaction. She's nodding.

"Haven't really spent a lot of time with pregnant women, huh?" I shake my head. I've been inside the heads of countless women but I am beginning to see how different hearing what they think and actually interacting with them is. Throw in the added complication of not being able to read Bella's mind and I am really flying blind here.

"Yeah, uh, let me give you a little piece of advice. Don't." She falls silent again and I wait for her to finish her sentence.

"That's it? 'Don't'? What does that mean?" She looks at me and blows out a big puff of air and shakes her head.

"I just think that you could give a girl a complex. I mean, I'm already the size of a water buffalo and retaining water as fast as Forks can produce it. Then you show up and offer to feed me some more häagen daz before you go to your next fucking photo shoot and it makes me feel kind of gross."

I don't even know what she's talking about so I just walk beside her silently until we get to her house. She stops in front and faces me.

"Thanks for walking me home and for freaking Newton out. It's kind of funny now, you know, in retrospect." She smiles at me. I want to prolong our time together but I don't really know how to since she doesn't really seem to enjoy my company.

"It was my pleasure. Would you like me to pick you up tomorrow so you can get your truck from my house?" She frowns slightly.

"No, I'm cool. I'll see you around, OK?" She turns and walks into her house while I stand out on the sidewalk, watching her go, considering not watching her sleep. My sense of pride and I compromise on hunting first and then just watching her for a few hours. Quite a moral victory.

This incident, luckily for me, allows my sister and I to offer Bella the secretary job at our office. Not that there's a real need for one. I mean, our phone isn't exactly ringing off the hook. At least she can guard the office supply cabinet.

She agrees, because Alice offered her the job. All of Alice's visions where I made the offer Bella says, "No".

Yeah, she digs me.


	10. Inside Job

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: Exuberant thanks to my beta, EverlastingMuse!

So I'm working on my best non-creepy workplace demeanor this week with Bella starting as our secretary. Some changes have to be made to the office to accommodate an actual human, like a refrigerator in the break room and toilet paper in the bathroom. I try to warn Alice about making too many changes that call attention to Bella's delicate condition after the ice cream and pickles debacle. Alice ignores me. Typical.

She actually orders a new desk chair from Europe specially designed for pregnant women which is funny to me because I thought that European countries had way more progressive maternity leave policies than the US. At least that's what all our snooty European vampire friends say. Those guys totally bug me. If I have to see them sitting around in their clogs talking about the fair distribution of wealth and socialized medicine one more time I'll vomit. Only figuratively, of course.

I mean, what do those guys even care? It's not like they use the health care system or anything, right?

Anyhow, Alice says that she'll take care of Bella's response to the changes to our office and I should just focus on "acting like I've actually talked to a girl before in my 100 plus years on earth." Apparently I come off a little awkward.

Emmett keeps telling me I need to act "smoother." Emmett's idea of looking smoother pretty much involves saying "babe" a lot and leaning on stuff nonchalantly.

Jasper keeps telling me to calm down because apparently I look a little tense when she's around. I tell him he would look a little tense if he had an unrequited crush on a pregnant human. To which he responds, "Well, Edward, it's a good thing that stuff only happens to you."

A plus on the normality front is that I have an actual client meeting scheduled for her first day. I figured it would help her take me seriously if it looks like I do something besides stalking and chasing wildlife.

Except, the client that my divorce lawyer buddy referred to me is a total pig. The guy is cheating on his wife, wants me to find evidence that she is cheating, and he completely misses the irony in that, even when I point it out. I let him know that I'll be in touch and am ushering him out of the office when he sees Bella, who showed up while we were in our appointment.

I want to punch him in the neck when I hear his thoughts about her but when she stands up and he takes in her…condition I freeze because I so shocked by the conclusion he comes to.

Because he assumes it's mine. The phrase "dipping your pen in the company inkwell" actually goes through his head. I haven't heard that one since the sixties. He turns to say it to me and thinks better of it when he sees my face. Which is frozen in a "surprised vampire" face, apparently.

"Mr. Fowler, this is Miss Swan." Fowler reaches out a hand to shake hers as she smiles politely.

"Mr. Fowler, a pleasure," she sits back down and looks at me to see if I have further directions. What I want is to usher Fowler the hell out of there so I can think about the implications of this.

I mean, it seems like I could make this work to my advantage, now that I clearly am not going to eat her and there was no "baby-daddy" jumping out of the woodwork. Sorry, I got that phrase from Emmett and it won't go away.

I am about to engage Bella in some ultra-smooth, non-creepy dialogue when Emmett comes crashing into the office.

"Dude, I have to talk to you!" Emmett begins to pull me into the office while I clear my throat and gesture toward Bella, trying to tell him that he's cutting in on my attempts to have "face time" with my new employee.

"Are you choking? What? Oh, yeah. Hi, Bella." Emmett gives Bella a wave and continues to pull me into the office. She smiles at him. "Hi, Emmett."

Emmett pulls me into the office and closes the door. "Dude, you are not going to believe…" Just then the door opens again and Alice rushes in.

"Edward, I have to tell you about what I just saw!" Alice is really excited and she pushes in front of Emmett.

"Oh, no, Alice, I was here first." Emmett crosses him arms and glares at her. Which, if you didn't know Emmett would be scary. But because we do it just looks silly. I mean, we've seen this guy in a giant bunny suit. Don't ask.

"Don't you have somewhere to be? I have to talk to Edward about business." Alice pulls the "I'm a professional" card. More like "professional pain in my ivory ass."

Just then the door opens again and Rosalie comes into my office. This is possibly the strangest thing I've ever seen her do, with the exception of that piece of "furniture" she ordered for her and Emmett's seventeenth anniversary…I shudder in recollection. That certainly taught me to look more closely at address labels. It's strange because Rosalie has never been to my office and has never actually walked more than ten feet out of her way to see me.

"Hi, uh…" she looks around at the office and then looks down at the floor awkwardly. "I, uh, was just coming by to say 'hi' and see if you needed any help getting the office ready." Emmett and I just stare at her.

"Uh, wow, Rose." I rub my head in confusion. "That's really nice of you. I don't really…" Just in case this wasn't bizarre enough I hear the sounds of Jasper and Carlisle greeting Bella in the outer office and then they enter the room, surprised to see the impromptu vampire party that I am apparently hosting here.

"Hey, guys. What's up?" Emmett greets them. Jasper looks from Alice to Rose and them to me.

"Um, we wanted to talk with Edward." He gestures between Carlisle and himself.

"Where's Esme?" I ask, since she's the only member of my family not here.

"She stopped to get Bella a plant for her desk. She'll be here in fifteen minutes." Alice has sat down on the couch. Emmett leans on my windowsill and grins at Rosalie, who still looks uncomfortable. I guess because she's unused to interacting with me without insults.

Jasper sits down next to Alice and looks at Carlisle questioningly. Carlisle shrugs back at him. Just then there's a knock on the door. "Come in," I call out to Bella.

She pokes her head into the office. "I'm sorry to bother you guys…" My entire family, in unison, says, "Oh, no, Bella, it's OK," with giant smiles on their faces.

"There's a Dr. Carmichael on the phone?" She looks at me and then around the room at my grinning, overly friendly family. "Do you want me to take a message?"

"I'll take care of it," Alice says and walks out of my office to take the call.

"Thank you, Bella," I say, with a smile. She nods and gives my insane family another glance before she goes back out, closing the door.

"So, who wants to go first?" I say to the assembled vampires. They all look at each other. "Emmett, what was so important that you couldn't wait until tonight?" Emmett gets an image of some vampire friends of ours, Tanya, Kate and Irina. The sisters are kind of like cousins, if your cousins were to try to have sex with you all the time.

"What's up with the sisters?" I ask Emmett with a little anxiety. Having them show up and make Bella uncomfortable would not be great.

"They're coming to visit. They left a message on the answering machine this morning." Emmett gives me this huge grin, like he thinks that this is a great idea.

"When?" Emmett looks embarrassed now. "In August," he said, looking down.

"August," I say to him. He nods. "And you had to come by today, on Bella's first day, to tell me this?"

Emmett looks around nervously. "Yeah, uh, I also needed to get some…" he looked at my desk, "uh…staples! I needed some staples." Emmett walked over to the office supply cabinet and grabbed a box of paperclips and waved them at me. "OK, I guess I'll get going," he said and walked out of the office.

I looked at Rosalie, Jasper and Carlisle.

"Yeah, um, I wanted to talk with you about something I noticed about Bella," Jasper says, looking at Carlisle who interjects, "Yes, Jasper came to me with an observation he made and we thought we should come talk to you about it immediately." Carlisle does his best to seem serious.

"At my office. On Bella's first day. You both came to talk to me about something you noticed about her." I eye them pointedly. They look at each other.

"It seemed like a good idea at home," Carlisle admits. Rose snorts.

"I'll admit it, if you guys won't. I wanted to come down here so you could help me make friends with Bella. You know how I feel about children, Edward. I thought that maybe if she and I were friends that she would let me, you know, be involved in her baby's life."

"Rose, that's very…sweet," I am actually touched by Rose's sincerity. "But you want me to help you make friends with her?" Rose laughs and shakes her head. Apparently she forgot that I am not doing so hot on the "make Bella like me" front.

"Yeah, you have a point. Maybe I'll just go talk to her." Rose walks out of my office where she sees Esme already sitting talking with Bella and joins them.

"Alright, you two. What's up?" Carlisle looks at Jasper and nods.

"Well, it's just that I've noticed that Bella's emotions are actually getting harder for me to read. Usually, the longer I'm around someone, the clearer they become, but with her, they're getting fainter. I can tell she's having emotional responses, from her expressions."

"Not to mention the fact that she's a pregnant human," Carlisle interjects.

"But, it's almost like they're being turned down, like with a dimmer switch." Jasper frowns. "I've never experienced anything like it."

"Can you get anything from the baby's mind?" Carlisle asks.

"I can't. I guess I wasn't thinking anything of it. I don't have a lot of experience being around pregnant women and I guess I was assuming that Bella was blocking it." I frown. "That's interesting but I don't see why that couldn't have waited until tonight." They look at me sheepishly. I walk into the outer office where Alice is still on the phone and Esme and Rose are talking with Bella.

"How about you, Esme? What brings you here?" Esme looks up in mild surprise.

"I came in to see Bella. I knew it was her first day so I thought I'd see how she was doing." Hand it to Esme to be transparent about her motives.

"Well, I guess we'll get going," Carlisle corrals Jasper. "We should let Edward and Bella get back to work." He looks pointedly at Esme and Rosalie. I nod at him thankfully. Even if my idea of "getting back to work" is resting my chin on my hand gazing at Bella while she works. I wonder if she'll let me do that.

"Oh, goodness, of course!" Esme gets up, pulling a reluctant Rose with her and my annoying family members say their goodbyes.

"We'll call you when we have any information, Dr. Carmichael," Alice wraps up the phone call and hangs up.

"Well, what did you need, Alice?" I ask. She grins at me.

"I was just coming to tell you to take that job but I just accepted it for you." She is still smiling broadly and looking at Bella and I in a way that makes me extremely anxious.

"Do you want to talk about it in my office?" I gesture toward the door but she shakes her head.

"No this involves Bella, too." Bella looks up in surprise.

"Dr. Carmichael is a podiatrist in Port Angeles. He is extremely paranoid and he is convinced that the Dr. in the office next to him is saying negative things about him to patients. You just have to go to the other Dr.'s office, undercover, and see if it's true."

"How does that involve me?" Bella asks, looking between the two of us.

"Dr. Richards is an obstetrician. We need a pregnant woman." Bella looks uncomfortable. Alice winks at me.

When I see what is in her head I realize that made an excellent hiring decision bringing my little sister into the business. She's totally employee of the month.


	11. Undercover

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everlasting Muse beta'ed this. I don't own Twilight, I just make them dance like monkeys. Dance, monkeys, dance!

Alice’s plan is brilliant. Seriously, I owe her a really nice birthday gift. Maybe a pony or something. 

The doctor we are investigating is in Port Angeles, so I have the ride there and the ride back to interact with Bella. You know, with the windows down and all.

Then, the appointment itself gives me a chance to find out more about Bella’s pregnancy. 

Bella’s not thrilled by the idea but she goes along with it because she’s still in that first week of work mindset where you want to impress your employer even if he’s a vampire and you think he’s creepy.

Carlisle finesses her regular obstetrician’s staff to make an appointment with Dr. Richards by telling them that Bella is going to be in Port Angeles for the week.

I figure we could go truly “undercover,” like with phony names and all but then I wouldn’t be able to get any good dirt on Bella’s pregnancy. So she is going as herself and I, uh, well we don’t really talk about who I am but I’m pretty determined to act like her boyfriend/”baby-daddy”/whatever for a couple reasons: a) It might subconsciously convince her to accept me in that, uh, position, b) it gives me an excuse to go into the exam room with her and c) Emmett told me I didn’t have the guts to.

I pick Bella up after school, which attracts a little attention. And by a little, I mean total jaws-dropping, “what’s he doing here” rubber-necking. Of course, doing my archaic “get out of the car and open the door for her” thing because I am that square.

I get into the Volvo and start the drive to Port Angeles. Bella is anxiously pulling at her clothes and fidgeting with the seat belt.

“I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do once we get there,” she says nervously. “I don’t have any experience with this detective thing.” I smile at her cheerfully. 

“All you have to do is show up for an appointment with the obstetrician. I’ll take care of the rest.” I tap my forehead. She frowns.

“I don’t really know what that means,” she says and taps her forehead in imitation of me.

“I’ll just listen,” I say.

“What if he doesn’t mention the other doctor?” 

“I’ll ask and if he doesn’t say anything out loud I can hear what he’s thinking at least.” 

She looks at me with surprise and I realize that she has no idea I can read minds. I’m irritated because I know my sister managed to find time to mention to Bella that I listened to The Cure obsessively in the eighties and nineties and that I have a piece of the fence from Wrigley Field in a safe in my room but she couldn’t be bothered to mention the fact that I can read minds. 

I’d be willing to bet she also hasn’t mentioned the fact that she’s like a Magic 8-Ball with a manicure.

“You read minds?” She asks, looking embarrassed.

“Yes.” I say, watching her carefully. She looks really uncomfortable.

“So, when I first saw you, you know, before you started lunging at me and had to be restrained, you saw what I was thinking?” I am now dying to know what she was thinking.

“I can’t read your mind. What were you thinking?” She looks relieved.

“Nothing, just about books and stuff.” I look at her skeptically. She won’t make eye contact for a minute. 

Then she says: “So am I the only mind you can’t read?”

“You and your baby, although my fetus-reading powers are questionable. And you might be blocking the baby’s mind so I might be able to read it after it’s born.”

“I can’t imagine that babies have terribly sophisticated thoughts. I mean, it probably is like ‘food, warm, dark’, right?”

“Yeah, pretty close. It’s pictures and feelings, mostly.”

I am relieved that she doesn’t seem freaked out by the mind-reading thing.

“Can I put some music on?” she gestured towards the radio.

“Sure,” I say. 

“What kind of stuff do you listen to?” She asks. God, do I tell her the truth and highlight for her how old I am?

“Uh, I like lots of stuff. Jazz, classical, rock, whatever.” I hope this is innocuous enough.

“I listen to, I guess, what they call classic rock?” she looks at me with a sudden smirk. “You know, stuff that came out when you were in your sixties?”

“Funny. Go ahead and put it on and I’ll tell you what I was doing when the song came out.” She looks at me with amusement. “Really?” She seems delighted as she turns the radio to a Port Angeles station. We tune into the end of “Layla.” Great, a song about unrequited love. Fucking Clapton.

“1970. We were living in Scotland so Emmett could connect with his roots. Alice loved this song. She would make me play the piano solo over and over. This song makes me think of haggis and Emmett in a kilt.” She laughs.

We listen to a few more songs before “Free Bird” come on and I make her change the station. There’s only so much a man can take.

When we get to the office we take seats in the waiting room and wait for Dr. Richards to call us. Looking around I realize that ALL of the pregnant women are staring at me. There’s also a curious dichotomy in the thoughts coming in my direction. Half of them are contemplating lewd acts with me and the other half are horrified that Bella’s so young. I am only 17 physically but Alice has been picking my clothes to make me look a little more mature, to fit my supposed age. So I guess I look like one of those college guys who date (and apparently impregnate) high school girls.

I decide to take advantage of our ruse so I present my open palm to Bella to hold. She looks at it for a moment, as if contemplating her choices. I mean, I guess she might be interpreting my gesture to mean I want a high-five or some money but I doubt it.

Then she slips her hand into mine and closes her fingers.

I have never touched Bella before. This explains why I didn’t know that I would feel this warm, tingling feeling when we touched. I know she can feel it too because I hear her intake of breath and I can feel a slight tremor in her hand.

I’m never going to let go of her hand. Seriously. It feels that good. I’m not thinking of her blood or her fragility or even the fact that she doesn’t really like me.

All I can focus on is her hand. Bella’s hand made me feel human and connected to another person in a way that I had never felt.

I wallowed in my sappy-ass thoughts about this while remaining perfectly still so I didn’t scare her hand off.

“Isabella Swan?” The assistant calls her name and Bella smiles at me nervously and gets up. I am forced to let go of her hand around which my world revolves. I follow her as the assistant leads her down the hall and to an exam room. She leaves us there.

“This is going to be just some questions and an ultrasound. If this doctor has to do anything else,” Bella eyes me sternly, “you’re out of here, OK?”

I hold my hands up, “There’s no way I would invade your privacy…like that.” She nods at me and sits down on the exam table.

“So, do you want to pretend I’m the father?” I want to get giggly just saying it but I’m worried that the action with be horrifying on me. Bella frowns at me.

“No, not if they’re going to coordinate with my doctor in Forks.”

“Why not? I mean, it wouldn’t bother me.” I don’t make eye contact with her for this one so she can’t see just how much it wouldn’t bother me.

“Yeah, that’s not going to work. Thank you for offering, though. That’s very sweet.”

I don’t have a chance to capitalize on my excruciating sweetness because the doctor comes in at that point. 

Dr. Richards is a middle-aged man with a receding hairline and a kind smile. He actually looks like someone sent him from Central Casting; he looks that much like an obstetrician.

“Miss Swan?” He looks at Bella kindly and then extends his hand to me to shake. “I’m Allen Richards.” I glance at Bella, uncertain how she wants to handle this. We have to have some sort of relationship to justify me being in here with her. Her introducing me as her boss is going to seem a little weird.

“This is Edward, my boyfriend,” she says, with a wince. I, on the other hand, am grinning like a loon as I shake his hand. Attractive couple, the good doctor is thinking. It’s just a pity she’s so young.

“So, Miss Swan…”

“Bella, please,” she says.

“Bella, I see your due date is June 20th?” I do the math vampire-fast and realize that Bella was pregnant for nearly a month when she moved to Forks. I am still working through the ramifications of this when I realize a) her baby’s due date is my birthday, which is cute and b) Bella is pulling her shirt up for the ultrasound.

Yeah, I know I’m getting all titillated about the bare stomach of a pregnant woman, don’t judge.

Dr. Richards puts that jelly stuff on her stomach and gets out his little fetus-cam and starts looking for a good angle, checking the screen behind him.

“I think I might be able to get a better view if you’re a little on your side,” he says to Bella and she turns about 45 degrees so she’s facing more towards where I’m sitting and gawking.

And then something wonderful and horrific happens.

I need to stop here and explain that all of my platonic little fantasies about having a relationship with Bella had been just that: platonic, innocent, hypothetical, based on some imaginary, make-believe relationship. The equivalent of those kids who pretend to get married when they’re eight. 

Remember how I talked about how young I had been when I was changed? Not just young chronologically but emotionally immature. You remember: war, detective novels, Cub’s baseball? 

I have been approached by women that no mortal man could resist, no matter the consequence, and I have been so freaked out by their lascivious thoughts that I would have hurled were I able to.

I have been ambushed in a hot tub by a succubus and I screamed like a banshee and ran away. 

I have questioned whether Angelina Jolie is a good actress.

Basically, I never grew up; I never crossed that step into adulthood, whatever it is that makes boys suddenly interested in sex. 

Until I found myself in that tiny exam room, with Bella Swan’s expanse of pale pregnant belly exposed, her lush brown hair flowing around her, the barest hint of cleavage showing (accidentally) where the buttons of her shirt stopped, her eyes meeting mine with a look of shyness and embarrassment.

In this awkward situation I had the poor taste, after a century of being an overgrown child, to suddenly grow up and have a…physiological response to my attraction to Bella. With her three feet away from me. Getting an ultrasound. 

I am now officially both a freak and a pervert.

A freak/pervert who is thrilled that he finally feels like a man.

And now needs to deal with this…situation without her noticing.

So I call upon all the things I have heard in men’s heads in the past ninety years about how to deal with this.

But I guess I’m the only one actually thinks that baseball is exciting. I mean, not sexually exciting, but certainly not make-my-boner-go-away awful.

So I try to think of things that are gross and I think of the myriad of images and sounds I have been exposed to of Emmett and Rosalie being intimate. Which is generally enough to make me want to tear my head off and throw it away but backfires this time when my newly awakened inner-pervert just substitutes Bella and I in those situations. Not helping.

Finally, I arrive upon the solution. Angela Lansbury.

Angela fucking Lansbury. Who began torturing me in the late forties with her simpering malevolence in “Gaslight.” Who’s pursed-mouth, coy, pseudo-shrewdness made me run screaming from rooms where innocent watchers of “Murder She Wrote” watched Jessica Fletcher bring death wherever she went. Who’s hideous screeching in “Beauty and the Beast” and “Sweeney Todd” made me wish I had been born without ears.

I thought of Angela Lansbury in “Death on the Nile” and was able to return myself to a presentable state in front of Bella.

Just in time to see the doctor pull the wand away from her belly.

Shit! I missed seeing the baby! I don’t even know what the gender is! I frown with my frustration with myself and realize that as distracted as I am I need to take care of the ostensible reason for my trip here today. As if I care.

So I ask Dr. Richards about his neighbor, the podiatrist, on the auspices of needing a good podiatrist for my mom, which makes Bella stifle a laugh.

And Alice was right; Dr. Carmichael is just a paranoid freak. The obstetrician doesn’t even think anything negative about him. In fact, he’s having trouble even remembering the guy’s name.

Still, I am simultaneously bummed out that I missed out on getting more information on the mystery-fetus and thrilled at my newfound status as an actually grown man, with erections and everything.

We part with Dr. Richards and begin our drive back to Forks. Bella seems cheerful and I ask her how she felt about the doctor.

“I actually really liked him,” she says, with a look of mild surprise. “I am trying to decide if it would be a major pain to switch doctors.”

“He’s better than Dr. Hansen?” Of course I know her other obstetrician’s name. Am I a stalker or am I not?

“Yeah, Dr. Hansen gets kind of judgmental on me about the whole “pregnant teenager” thing. This guy didn’t seem to have a major problem.”

“He thought you were young but that’s all. He also thought we were a good-looking couple.” I can’t resist. Might as well plant the seeds. Bella gets a slight frown on her face.

“He might have been less worried than Dr. Richards about your well being because you had a, uh…significant other.” My selflessness in helping Bella think this through knows no bounds.

“Yeah, that’s a good point,” she nods thoughtfully. “I guess if I switch doctors I’d have to have you come along. That would become pretty inconvenient for you.”

“It’s not that big of a deal if it means you have a doctor you like. I could make it for some appointments.” I try to sound off-hand about it. “Some appointments.” The truth is I could make any and every appointment she made, even if there was a zombie apocalypse and I had to run there with her on my back and a shovel in my hand.

Of course, since I am thinking about going to the obstetricians with her and apparently that is a fetish of mine I immediately start thinking about how I’m going to have to bring photographs of Angela Lansbury along with me and how effective it would be if I just put that theme song from “Beauty and the Beast” on my iPod and I kind of zone out until I hear her say “cold hands.”

“I’m sorry,” I ask. “Who has cold hands?” I swear she blushes and looks at my hands on the steering wheel.

“I was just saying that a tolerance for teenage pregnancy is no stranger a requirement for choosing an obstetrician than whether or not they have cold hands.”

“Cold hands being uncomfortable, I guess.” I am crushed. It should have occurred to me when she held my hand that she was repulsed by my frosty digits.

“No, actually, cold stuff doesn’t bug me,” she blushes and I watch as she shyly speaks. ”Growing up in Arizona cold stuff was good, like popsicles and air conditioning.” Her eyes actually get a little hazy talking about it. “I remember drinking milkshakes on hot days. So delicious. There was no better feeling.”

So much for calming myself down. Now I’m imagining how much she would like my cold hands all over her and, stuck in the car with her like this, with that dreamy look on her face, not even Angela can help me out this time.

The ride home is quiet but less uptight than when we’ve been alone together previously. Which is not to say it isn’t rigid.


	12. Casing the Joint

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own it. Seriously.

So I tell Alice that she’s going to have to give it up to Bella about her fortune-telling abilities so I can look like less of a circus freak. She reluctantly agrees only after I give her all the info I gleaned from Bella at the obstetrician’s as well as anything that I may potentially learn at future obstetric appointments. 

It’s a complex negotiation which takes two days and requires each of us to consult our legal counsel, so it’s a good thing that Rosalie and Emmett went to law school.

I mean, they can’t practice in the state of Washington and it was the 1960’s but both are able to review contracts and stuff. I am lucky that I am able to secure Rosalie’s services as she is clearly the better lawyer than Emmett because she’s a) a total hard-ass and b) able to manipulate the bejeezus out of Emmett. 

Of course, to secure Rosalie’s services I have to promise her that I will facilitate access to the progeny of the above-mentioned subject of inquiry.

We four have set up negotiations in the dining room. Jasper got so disgusted after the first day that he refuses to be in the same room as us. He’s sitting in the living room watching that Ken Burns “Civil War” documentary that he quotes all the damn time when Esme comes in from grocery shopping. She’s been so pleased to have a human to cook for that it’s been almost unbearable in the house with all the “food” smells. I’m sorry but most vegetables just smell nastier cooked than they do raw. And brussel sprouts are just pointless.

“They’re not playing Monopoly again, are they?” Esme asks. She had to throw the Monopoly set out about 15 years ago when an all-night game turned ugly. Emmett is a competitive bitch, that’s all I’m gonna say. And I didn’t actually intend to pull his arm off; he just wouldn’t let me put any more hotels on Park Place.

“No, they are negotiating human access,” Jasper says to Esme. She sighs and sticks her head in the dining room.

“You guys are just sick,” she says. “She’s a human, not a toy. This is highly disrespectful to Bella.”

We all hang our heads in shame for a minute, except Rose, who knows no shame. Then we get back to negotiations.

We are finally able to come to an agreement on the whole thing in less time than it took to settle the Great Station Wagon Debate of 1973, the argument by which all arguments are measured. At least this one stayed civil as measured by appendages removed and furniture damage. This one is more comparable to the “Last Space inthe Carport” treaty of 1961, the catalyst for Rose and Emmett going to law school. At least we didn’t have to call in outsiders to mediate this one. That would have been awkward.

So we are working in the office, and by “working” I mean Alice is reading a magazine, Bella is learning the billing software and I am skulking around trying to think of things to send Alice out of the office for.

“That won’t work,” Alice says. I think she’s talking to me but then I realize that she’s looking at Bella. When Bella realizes that Alice is addressing her she frowns.

“What do you mean? I did the online tutorial.” Alice shakes her head.

“No, I mean that moving in with Lauren and Jessica won’t work. You won’t like it.”

“How did you…Wait, can you read minds, too? Can you read my mind?” Bella looks noticeably uncomfortable.

“No. I can see the future.” Alice says, looking back down to her magazine.

“The future. Like all of it?” Bella is staring at Alice nervously.

“Well, not all of it, just bits and pieces. When people make decisions I can see the outcome of those decisions. When you decided to move in with Lauren and Jessica after graduation I saw what would happen. Lauren is going to want to throw parties all the time and Jessica…” Alice shudders. “You just don’t want to live with Jessica. Trust me.”

“Why are you thinking of moving out of the Chief’s?” I ask. 

Bella looks uncomfortable. “I, uh, I don’t really want to tell you guys. It doesn’t really make me look very good.” Who is she kidding? She thinks that I masturbate in my office and she’s worried about how she looks?

“You couldn’t possibly look worse than Edward,” Alice says. Fuck you, Alice.

“Yeah, and Alice here paid off a bunch of students to get herself elected as Treasurer of the French Club at our last school.” I stick my tongue out at Alice so fast that only she will see it.

“It wasn’t fair that that guy was from France and so everyone thought he was better!” Alice flips me off at lightning speed.

“Yeah, this is still worse,” Bella says although she is smiling slightly at our accusations.

“Yeah, well Edward…” I see that Alice is about to tell her about my nocturnal “observation sessions” and I cut her off.

“Thinks that that French guy had a totally unfair advantage,” I add, giving Alice a pleading look. “Anyway, I think he was really from Belgium. What a poseur.”

“Yeah, anyway,” Bella looks between us curiously. “I wasn’t really honest with Charlie about something and things have just been kind of tense.”

“Well, can you talk it over with him?” Alice says. Like she’s some undead Dr. Phil and shit.

“It’s not really that easily resolved,” Bella is clearly debating talking with us, which is a first. She’s more closed-mouthed than a mime. “I kind of inferred that I was willing to put the baby up for adoption when I first moved here and I…wasn’t really ever interested in doing that. It wasn’t really very honest of me but I was trying to keep things civil. I read that fetuses could be affected by stress that the mother is feeling and I am really trying to minimize the drama in my life so I can stay calm.”

“Well, you could…” Alice cuts me off.

“You don’t want to move out until after graduation, right?” Alice gives me a slight shake of the head as she talks to Bella.

“I don’t know,” Bella smirks. “You’re the one who can see the future. You tell me.”

“You should wait,” Alice says, looking back to her magazine.

“Anyhow, we can’t judge you for not being honest to the Chief, we lie all the time.” I grin at Bella. She laughs at me.

“All the time, huh?” I nod. 

“Yeah, you know, ‘My skin is cold because I have cold circulation,’ ‘I ate a big breakfast,’ ‘Yeah, Emmett, I’m sure Rose respects you.’ Stuff like that.” 

“So, you could be lying to me, like, all the time?” Bella looks at me, amused.

“Yeah, I probably am. By the way, you don’t even look pregnant in that sweater.” Bella looks down at the bowling ball in her lap and then back at me and laughs.

“So we should have a graduation party,” Alice interjects. 

“Is that a trick question? I mean, have you already seen it happening?” Bella teases Alice. Alice sticks her tongue out at Bella.

“No, that’s why I’m suggesting it. Bella, unlike us, you’re only going to graduate from high school once. You should have a graduation party.” Bella shakes her head.

“I don’t have any friends in Forks besides you guys. Who am I going to invite? My obstetrician? The guy at the drugstore where I buy my prenatal vitamins?”

“Well, I was thinking we could plan a really nice party at our place and only invite people we like and then everyone who had been trolls to you would be jealous,” Alice looks at Bella earnestly. Bella smiles at her indulgently.

“Alice, that is really sweet but I don’t really enjoy parties and I’m not really that upset about being the leper of Forks. I mean, if my parents are being jerks about this whole thing, why should I expect an bunch of high school students to respond any more maturely?”

I feel so bad for her; I wish I could go slap her parents around. I also keep thinking about that “moving out of the Chief’s house” thing. I’m sure you can guess where I think she should move. I’m nothing if not predictably obsessive.

But I’m guessing that from the way Alice cut me off that it was a bad idea for me to make the offer. I can imagine it would come off a little aggressive. “Hey, Bella, since we’ve talked you into working here and I go to all your doctor’s appointments with you, why not move in so I don’t have to cross town to watch you sleep?” 

“Well, we’ll just invite people we like, like, uh, each other, I guess, and have a good time,” Alice smiles and starts to make a list of things to do for the party. Bella groans and I give her a sympathetic look. Maybe I can offer to let her hang out in my room the whole time. Purely for the purpose of her comfort, of course.

“Well, I’m going to get going. I’ve got a party to plan!” Alice grabs her list and her purse and goes spinning out of the room with a glance back at me as she thinks: “Don’t talk to her about moving in! But you can ask her about her mom!” I give her a nod and sit down in Alice’s chair next to Bella’s desk.

“So, do you think your mom is going to come for your graduation?” Bella sighs.

“I don’t know. She’s pretty pissed off about the baby. I mean, she kicked me out.”

“Yeah, but she’s your mom. She’ll get over it, right?” I cannot believe that anyone could stay mad at Bella, especially her own mom.

“My mom is still mad about Fleetwood Mac breaking up. She can hold a grudge.” Bella smiles. “It’s cool, Edward. I know you feel sorry for me but I’m ok. I have you guys and I’m not really as dependent on my parents as a lot of kids. I mean, Charlie has always been pretty distant and Renee is kind of…self-absorbed.” I get such warm fuzzies when she talks about having us as a support network. Using the term “warm” figuratively. I am roughly 58 degrees as we speak, of course. 

“So, can we drop this little therapy session? Unless you want to interpret my dreams or something this is a pretty lame conversation. I guess I could lie down on the couch and talk about what I remember about being potty trained.” She smiles at me and reaches out to touch my hand but stops herself about 6 inches before making contact. Her hand changes course and grabs her bottle of water instead and she takes a drink.

“If you’re going to lie down on my couch we don’t even have to have a conversation,” slips out of my traitorous mouth before I can stop myself and Bella chokes on her water.

As soon as she’s done sputtering and choking I can tell she’s embarrassed and I’m pretty ashamed of myself for talking to her like that so I make myself scarce in my office for the rest of the day. Way to kill the mood, Slick. I’m so pathetic that what might have been some pretty successful flirtation if applied to someone actually interested in me nearly ended up requiring the Heimlich maneuver.

My fucktastic mood is only improved by the sight of the boxes of party supplies already arriving at the house when I get home. Which are being stored conveniently in my room. Of course. Because, as Rose explains it, “It’s not like you have a bed.” Thanks for the reminder, Sis. 

But Alice cheers me up by showing me that Bella is going to move in after all, it’s just going to have to be her decision. And it’s not going to happen until after she graduates.

Which means that my bedroom will get a bed after all. Because Esme is going to give Bella my room and move me into the fricking broom closet down the hall. Which I’m pretty much ok with.


	13. Whodunit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everlasting Muse beta's it.

So I think Bella is beautiful, don’t get me wrong. 

I just think that the average graduation robe was really not designed with the 5’2” pregnant woman in mind. None of the girls really look their best (because they are wearing big acetate robes) but she looks remarkably like a parking kiosk. Any minute now I’m expecting to see some retired guy with a library book poke his head out of her sleeve to take my ticket. 

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to hand the man in her robe my ticket because that would require me to step into the blazing sunshine that Forks is deciding to have on Bella’s graduation day. I guess I could just pretend someone had ordered those sparkly mirrored balls for the graduation.

To be fair, it’s Alice and Jasper’s graduation day as well but it’s Bella’s first high school graduation and Alice’s 6th. Not that Alice isn’t still close enough from our position in the woods to hear the speaker, the president of First Bank of Forks, the long-winded and painfully boring Tom Mallory, as well as the scintillating words of Eric Yorkie, the valedictorian, who is thrilled to be quoting the edgy wisdom of both Benjamin Franklin and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Way to make your mark, Erik. It’s not every man that has the guts to spew the same stuff that every high school valedictorian in the history of high school has said. Talk about the road less traveled, sport.

On an even less entertaining note, Bella’s mom had also decided to show up for the graduation, with her new boyfriend, Phil, and Bella’s not thrilled. Apparently her mom and Phil are staying at Charlie’s house and Bella is getting tag-teamed by her parents.

Jasper and Alice and I stand in the woods watching the rest of the ceremony, wishing we could make a bunch of noise when Bella’s name gets called, since that’s how you measure high school popularity. There is some clapping, though, so it’s not total cricket-chirping silence.

What was cool was that we actually came up with about 20 people that Bella did want to invite to our graduation party, people who had been nice to her in her time here. 

The best moment actually came after the ceremony when Angela Weber told her dad that she was going to our party. The Reverend Weber had been adamant that Angela not have anything to do with the local pregnant teenager and he sputtered and turned red when his normally meek daughter told him that she was going whether he liked it or not. Jasper and Alice and I traded high-fives from our position in the forest and our estimation of Angela went way up.

We got out of there when the ceremony was over so we could get back to the house and help Esme finish setting up. Even Rosalie was helping out, although she was giving Jasper and I a hard time about which direction the streamers we put up were twisting. As if Martha Stewart was coming over and was going to notice that some were clockwise and others weren’t.

At least we had gotten all of our human party issues settled before the big event. It seems we all had different ideas of what was appropriate for a graduation party, depending upon what time period we had died in and how much TV we watched in the ensuing decades. So Emmett wanted a keg, I had to be talked out of wearing a tuxedo and Jasper was told that no really appreciated a good jug band anymore. “I mean, how hard can it be to find a washboard?” he walked around saying for a few days.

Luckily Alice was able to cancel the order that Emmett made and we let him know that a woman jumping out of a cake was not what was generally done at high school graduation parties. 

We get the streamers properly aligned just as guests start arriving. Bella looks so much prettier out of her robe despite the scowl she’s wearing from listening to her parents all afternoon.

Even Phil, her mom’s boyfriend, is getting tired of the ass-chewing Bella is getting and he wanders off to the den, which Emmett and Jasper have dubbed “The Bat Cave.” They’ve got a flatscreen TV and a bunch of game systems in addition to all their sports memorabilia. I know Emmett’s even got a Mark fucking McGuire autographed bat that he keeps up in his room. He keeps it under the bed with a bunch of stuff that I totally don’t want to touch or even think about. I’m hoping he’ll bring it out to show Phil so I can steal it and smash it. 

Phil’s a minor league ball player so we’re able to sit around and talk baseball for a few minutes. I even manage to not punch Emmett in the throat when he mentions Dusty Baker being a great manager. Which he’s not, by the way. 

I have covered Baker’s poor management of the Giants in the 2002 World Series and am starting to address his poor management of the Cubs in the 2003 World Series when Alice taps me on the arm.

Which is excellent timing because Phil is looking a little alarmed at the vehemence with which I discuss baseball and Emmett is getting ready to mention that the Cubs haven’t won a World Series in 102 years and that can’t all be Dusty Baker’s fault.

Which would totally piss me off. 

At first I think that Alice is interrupting me before I do something in a baseball-fan-frenzy like start yelling statistics or challenge Emmett to a duel but I realize that she’s got something different in mind when she pulls me out to the patio.

“I don’t want to explain right now but I want you to do something.” She showed me in her head what she wanted and I looked at her in surprise. She nodded and I shrugged, making my way back into the house.

I find Bella talking to her parents in the living room. I could tell from her posture that it wasn’t a comfortable conversation and as I tune into it I could hear her mom saying: “Honey, we just want what’s best for you.”

I walk over to them as Bella answers.

“I know you guys are worried but it’s not like you guys didn’t have me when you were teenagers. I turned out ok, right?”

“But Bella, we were married. You don’t have any…” Chief Swan’s words broke off as I slipped my arm around Bella’s shoulders. I could feel her shudder slightly as that pulse of warmth I felt the last time I had touched her spread through me again. Either she felt it too or she was freaking out about my coldness. Oh, wait, that’s right, she dug coldness. I am totally irresistible.

“You must be Renee,” I extended my free hand to Bella’s mom, whose jaw has dropped open at my sudden appearance. And my handsomeness, too. I read minds, remember?

Renee takes my hand and shakes it warmly but the Chief is less than pleased. Apparently, the fact that his daughter looks to be cozying up to what he thinks might be an acceptable boyfriend-choice kind of ruins his argument. If only I could reassure him of what a totally inappropriate choice I actually am. But that would be shooting myself in the foot, now wouldn’t it? Metaphorically speaking, I mean. Literally shooting myself in the foot would only cause the bullet to ricochet around the room, potentially hurting people and really killing the vibe.

Bella just looks at me briefly and smiles while her dad chews on the edges of his cop mustache and mumbles: “Hello, Mr. Cullen.” Charlie has always called me this, for reasons I have yet to figure out. I think he does it to be respectful or something, since we have encountered each other professionally.

“Edward, please,” I say with a smile. He does something with his mouth that I think is supposed to be a smile.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Edward,” Renee is actually kind of simpering at me. Which is a weird word in itself but at least someone here likes me.

“How are you doing?” I look down on Bella, rubbing her upper arm with my hand. She shivers and then gets a tiny frown on her face.

“You know, I am actually kind of hungry,” she says. “Let’s go get some of Esme’s legendary spinach dip.” She smiles at me pointedly and I could be wrong but I think I might be in trouble. 

“Of course,” I say and lead her into the kitchen. When she sees that it is unoccupied she pulls out of my grasp.

“What the hell was that? You realize that was a really bad time to play pretend in there, right?” I open and close my mouth a few times as she waits for me to respond. Kind of like a fish.

“I’m in there talking about how it’s my decision to make and I’m a big girl and you walk up and start pretending to be interested in my pregnant ass and you know what it looks like?”

I shake my head “No.”

“It looks like I’m just a Cullen charity case. Or like I’ve used some insta-family voodoo on you. Like I’m having this baby to trap the rich guy in town.” Bella looks angry. Alice sucks.

“It’s my fault,” Alice’s voice comes from the doorway. “I told Edward to do it and I didn’t tell him what would happen.” Bella looks over at Alice and sighs.

“Alice, you…” Bella sighs and shakes her head. “You better have someplace for me to stay tonight and a ton of chocolate cake because that shit wasn’t cool. Charlie’s all pissed off and my mom thinks Edward’s gonna rescue me.”

Alice smiles. “Edward, go show Bella her room.” Bella looks at me sharply and I shrug my shoulders at her.

“Come on,” I say, leading her out of the kitchen. I take her up to show her the room, my ex-room, which Esme and Alice have fixed up for her.

I have been relegated to Alice’s former sewing room down the hall but my new “room”, and by room I mean closet, doesn’t have enough space for my books and all my music so they’ve just moved my couch and desk in there, along with my journals, which contain the scintillating details of my 100 plus years of ennui. Emmett calls it “100 years of loserdom.” They’ve also moved some of my clothes and some of my more adolescent books. Also my complete collection of “Yes” records and the picture of me at Edgar Allen Poe’s graveyard in the 1970’s. I just don’t want Bella to get the wrong idea about me. You know, that I’m like a dork or something.

Bella looks around the room, gasping. “This is so beautiful!” I am pleased to see her so happy and hope that she decides to stay, as Alice predicted. Bella’s eyes stop at the shelves of records and my excellent stereo that I am happy to sacrifice for her comfort.

“Edward, was this your room?” she asks me, suspiciously. I nod, quickly adding: “Seriously, Bella, I don’t even need it. I moved to a room down the hall. It’s totally big enough.” Yeah, big enough for a cat carrier, but I leave that part out.

“So that was your bed?” Bella points to the bed that Esme and Rosalie ordered for her. It is surprisingly girly, with these big iron roses.

“Of course not,” I shake my head. “What would I do with a bed?” I laugh and then I realize that Bella’s eyes have glazed over and she doesn’t seem to be really with me.

“Hey, are you ok?” I wave my hand in front of her eyes. She shakes her head and blushes. “Sorry,” she says. “Pregnancy hormones and all. We should get back to the party.” Bella walks out the door, leaving me to decipher her statement. Pregnancy hormones? I’d never heard of them making you inattentive. I figured I’d have to google it.

The rest of the party goes pretty smoothly after Bella lets her parents know that she’s spending the night here and Renee gives me a knowing look and Chief Swan just looks resigned.

Jasper and I go out hunting since being we couldn’t go earlier and being stuck in a house full of dinner all day was sort of hard. Hard on Jasper, I mean. I have perfect control. Even with Bella staying in the house.

Jasper and I arrive back at the house to see Bella sitting on the front porch in the dark. We see her long before she sees us and it gives me a chance to examine her expression. And her, uh, nightgown? It had to be Alice’s doing, the things I saw Bella wear when I was stalking her in her own home were much more demure. What she was wearing was…not. I covered up Jasper’s eyes.

“What the fuck?” Jasper pushed my hands away. ‘What are you doing?” 

“Just because your wife has apparently discovered maternity porn or something doesn’t mean you should see Bella like that.” I am trying to block Jasper’s vision with my body but it’s making us trip over each other.

“Like you should? It’s not like you’re an item or anything?” To his credit, Jasper isn’t even trying to see her, he’s just trying to walk in a straight line without me blocking him.

“I’m being respectful!” I hiss, maneuvering my body so I continue to block his view of her. At this point we’re making so much noise that she’s noticed our approach, as has the rest of the house and she pulls her robe tighter over her chest. 

“Evening, Bella,” Jasper says as he goes into the house and I pause in front of where she’s sitting.

“Mind if I join you?” I ask, gesturing to the chair next to her. She nods.

“Why are you up so late?” I ask, noticing that she has a half empty cup of tea next to her. She sighs.

“I just couldn’t sleep. It was a stressful day.” She is still looking out into the forest thoughtfully.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask, since I am apparently really sensitive and understanding. As well as hoping that her robe will slip open again.

“It’s just this stuff with my parents. And the worst part of it is, I totally get where they’re coming from. It makes no sense for me to have a baby at 18. I’ve always thought of myself as the last girl that would get knocked-up in high school.”

“You didn’t know me before, Edward, but I was really smart and focused and not…not like this!” She gestures to her stomach. “I don’t mean not pregnant but just not that kind of girl.” She lets out a huff of frustration. “I don’t know how to explain it without it sounding crazy.” She continues to stare out into the woods, frowning.

“I can read minds and I’ve been around for a hundred years. Do you really think that your reasons for having this baby are going to sound unusual to me?” She lets out a laugh. “Seriously, I’ve heard some crazy shit. Have you ever been to one of those Star Trek conventions? I have and it was an eye-opener, let me tell you.” She laughs again and this time she looks at me.

“Ok, but I haven’t told anyone this. You have to promise not to tell anyone.”

“Got it,” I hold up my hand in the Boy Scout three-finger oath. She looks at me oddly for a second and then takes a deep breath.

“So I got pregnant on accident. I’d only had sex like twice and I got pregnant on accident. Worst luck, right?” I nod and gesture for her to continue.

“I don’t even know what compelled me to sleep with this guy except, I don’t know, it was really stupid. I shouldn’t have. How was I supposed to know the guy couldn’t even use a condom right or anything? So I find out I’m pregnant and I make this appointment to…get rid of it? I mean, I gave this huge persuasive speech on a woman’s right to choose in my junior year. How’s that for irony?” She shakes her head in annoyance. “So the night before I have this dream. But it feels really real and there’s this little boy in it. And I know, I just know, that he’s my baby. When I wake up, I just can’t go through with it. I met my baby and I don’t want to give him up.”

“Crazy, huh? I’m like the least superstitious person in the world. I mean, my Mom loves that stuff, you know past lives and auras and shit. But I’ve always been totally logical.” She smiles at me. “So then I move here, because my Mom goes totally apeshit when she hears I’m pregnant and I meet a bunch of vampires and werewolves. Funny, huh?” She looks like she’s about to cry. Shit. Crying woman are totally not in my skill set. I am fucked. And yet I want so badly to be able to comfort her.

I reach over to her and stroke her arm lightly. At which point she bursts into tears. Full-on wet, heartbreaking tears. I scoot my chair closer and slip both my arms around loosely, muttering stuff like: “It’s ok, Bella,” and “There, there.” Whatever the fuck that means. There, there?! I am an idiot.

But I’m not going to lie to you. It is nice being able to touch her. Even if she weren’t wearing some indecent pregnant woman thing that my sister is going to get major thank-yous for. It’s also nice that she likes me enough to come to me for support.

The water works peter out and she wipes her face on the sleeve of her robe. I’m still holding onto her awkwardly across the distance between our two chairs but she pushes against me lightly and I reluctantly let her go.

“I’m sorry, I just am having a hard time today,” she mutters, looking down into her lap, clearly embarrassed. 

“Bella, don’t apologize. I…” she cuts me off right as I’m about to tell her, I don’t know, something about how I worship her or something. 

“It’s just that I just graduated from high school and I’m having a freaking baby in less than a month and I don’t even have a boyfriend or even a place to live after pissing my dad off today.” She throws her hands up in frustration. I think about volunteering for the “boyfriend” thing but it feels a little predatory after she’s been crying so I try to address the other issue.

“Bella, I don’t know if you realized that Esme and Rose bought a distinctly girly bed for my old room.” She sniffs and looks at me with a frown.

“Yeah?” She shrugs her shoulders at me.

“They want you to move in with us. Alice predicted that you would almost a month ago.” Bella mumbles something like “fucking living Ouji board” and then takes a deep breath.

“It seems like a little bit much, Edward. Not that your family hasn’t been really sweet to me but I don’t think I could impose.” I shake my head at her.

“Don’t be ridiculous. They want access to your baby. Those two are total baby whores, they would do anything to be around for this.” I gesture to her stomach. She frowns at me. “Not that they don’t like you,” I hasten to add. “But they really want to be around your baby.” Bella gets a really small, really tired smile on her face.

“I guess I could, for a while. It’d be nice to have the help.” I try to keep my enthusiasm off of my face. 

“Excellent,” I say, getting up and extending my hand for her. “Now, you need to get to sleep.” I pulled her out the chair and made sure she was steady on her feet. She was looking at me with something I could decipher, maybe confusion? I raised an eyebrow at her. 

“What?” I ask, looking at her deep brown eyes as they examine me. She shook her head and laughed lightly.

“You got deer or something right there,” she answered, brushing her hand across the side of my forehead. 

Great. I’m thinking she’s looking longingly into my eyes and really I just have food on my face.


	14. Behind the Eight-Ball

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't even remember who beta'ed this one. Maybe no one.

I am thrilled that Bella is staying in our house. The only downside is that I can’t visually stalk her while she’s sleeping. I mean, I can hang out in the hallway outside my/her room and listen to her heartbeat and breathing and nonsensical sleep talking but I can’t actually see her. I guess you can’t have everything, huh?

What is less than thrilling is the way my calendar is shaping up for this weekend. I was looking forward to just lying around at Bella’s feet, fetching things for her, impressing her with my profound intelligence and sensitivity, maybe make her a milkshake or two. God, I mean that in such a suggestive way that I give myself the creeps.

But what I really have to do, according to Alice, is take Bella over to her dad’s house and, while Alice is helping her pack some things, have an uncomfortable conversation with her dad about my intentions with his daughter. Cool.

Alice drags me outside while Bella is eating the enormous and varied breakfast Esme has made for her. When I see what’s in her head I start shaking my head vigorously.

“No way, Alice. That’s just not going to happen. You set me up last night, who knows what’s going to happen when I talk to the Chief.” Alice puts her hands on her hips and points her finger at me. I hate that. I just know I’m gonna lose when she busts out the finger pointing.

“I “set you up’ to have Bella under the same roof as you. Are you really going to pretend that you didn’t get just what you wanted?” Oh, fuck. Air quotes. Plus, she’s right. I hate that as well.

“Yeah, but it was uncomfortable,” I whine. At this point I’m on the ropes. I’ve already lost this one.

“Uncomfortable?” Alice’s voice becomes uncomfortably shrill. I’m guessing that there are dogs in Seattle that can pick up on her frequency. “It was uncomfortable for you? Was it uncomfortable for you when she opened up to you last night? Did it cause you discomfort when she cried in your arms? Are you really going to play that card, Edward? Because I can stop trying to do all the work here for you and just leave you two to work it out on your own and maybe by the time her kid is going to college she’ll be willing to share a toothbrush with you.” Alice is pissed. I decide not to mention that I don’t really need to brush my teeth. 

“You are right, Alice. I’m sorry I doubted you. You’ve done nothing but help me out and I should just trust you.” She nods, still squinting at me with annoyance.

“What else?” she says. This isn’t my first time at the “Alice is right” rodeo and I know what comes next.

“I should consider myself lucky to have a sister so concerned about my well-being and desires. I am going immediately to get my credit card and buy you something to show you how much I appreciate you.” Alice nods and then gives me a brilliant smile.

“Oh, Edward, I love them!” I see a picture in her head of the earrings I am going to buy her. At least shopping for Alice is easy, if expensive. If she’s feeling generous she’ll tell me where they came from so I don’t have to spend the next three days searching the internet.

We drive over to Chief Swan’s house in Esme’s minivan so we have room for Bella’s stuff. I figure it would be good to get used to the whole mini-van thing if I’m interested in a pregnant woman. Bella is not making a lot of eye contact with me this morning so I’m guessing she feels uncomfortable after opening up to me the night before. Alice fills up the silence. With annoying nonsense. Something about “Top Chef” and a trip to Montreal she wanted to make and the Grammies. I don’t know where she even gets this shit.

I spend the drive repeating to myself “I am the world’s most dangerous predator” over and over again to psych myself up for facing the Chief.

We arrive at the Chief’s house and Alice and Bella scurry upstairs as fast as they can. Well, Alice scurries and Bella moves as quickly as a woman who’s about to have a baby in a month can. They leave the Chief and I staring at each other.

“Chief Swan,” I nod at him in greeting. He gives me the guy nod back.

“Mr. Cullen.” I start whistling and looking around awkwardly. I know I have to initiate this conversation and I repeat to myself the line about being a dangerous predator one more time, just to give me courage to face the mustached terror in front of me.

“So, I was hoping we could have a talk, Chief.” I try to give him my most charming smile. Go figure Charlie and his daughter are the only one’s that it doesn’t work on.

“Come on in,” Charlie ushers me into the kitchen where he was apparently cleaning his gun when we arrived. Cleaning his gun and drinking a beer. Great.

“So,” I take a deep and utterly unnecessary breath. “I thought you might be concerned about Bella moving in with my family and I was hoping I could alleviate some of those concerns.” Charlie gives me a slight frown and then speaks.

“Well, I’m concerned about my daughter for a lot of reasons. No father wants to see his daughter pregnant at eighteen. And my Bella is a smart girl and I am afraid that she won’t get the opportunities that she deserves if she’s got a kid.” I finally get something from the murky thoughts of Charlie Swan. I see him agonizing over his ex-wife’s departure seventeen years before and then seeing Bella take her place in this house terrifies him. 

“I understand completely, Chief.” And I do. Most of the time the Chief’s thoughts are hard for me to read but right now I get that he is just a dad scared that his smart, talented daughter is going to hate her life the way her mother did. That she will regret having her child and spend the rest of her life playing “catch-up.”

“I want to tell you that my family and I appreciate how smart Bella is and we want to help her. My sisters and mother are really excited about being able to help Bella out with the baby and I’m sure that having them to help out will make it so that Bella will be able to go to school or do whatever it is she wants to do. To be honest, the baby is a pretty big selling point for them. Not that they don’t like Bella, sir.” I hasten to add. The Chief smirks at me.

“And how about you, son? Are you excited about helping baby-sit?” I know what he’s asking and I remember that Chief Swan is more perceptive than he looks.

“Well, sir, between you and I, I am rather fond of Bella and am hoping that she will eventually feel the same way. But she doesn’t share those feelings right now and if she never does, well, I’ll accept that.” Yeah, and then go kill myself. Somehow.

Chief Swan squints at me for a minute. “Well, Mr. Cullen, I’m going to trust that you and your family will do right by my daughter. I can see that you care about her. But if I hear any different you will hear from me.” What he doesn’t say is that he knows there’s something different about me but can’t put his finger on it. 

I see clearly in that moment that Charlie Swan doesn’t know what I am but he’s got a hunch I’m not what I appear to be. But then he also knows that there’s something up with his best friend’s son, Jacob. Add into the mix the hostility the Quileute’s have for me and my family and how much my sister and I have helped Bella and Charlie Swan is left wondering just how much he needs to know. 

I can see in his head that the Chief has decided to trust me, not a lot, but at least for the time being, based on his instincts, and I am so grateful I want to thank him. Which would confuse the shit out of him because he knows I’m not human but hasn’t even considered that I might be able to hear his thoughts. I manage to refrain from hugging him in gratitude but I decide to ask him something I’ve been curious about.

“I appreciate your trust, Chief Swan, but I have a question for you. I’ve asked you to call me Edward. Why do you always call me Mr. Cullen?” Charlie smiles.

“Well, I don’t know how old you are.” When he says this he gives me a momentary sharp look. “But you don’t honestly look much older than 17 and I figured I’d try to give you a little credibility if I called you Mr. Cullen. You know, so that people might take you a bit more seriously as a detective.” He winks at me and I look down at what I’m wearing.

“You mean, I’ve been wearing khakis and sweater vests this whole time and I still look like a teenager?” The chief laughs.

“Sorry, Edward, maybe if you grew a mustache or something.” He strokes his own cop-like facial hair.

The women coming downstairs with some of Bella’s stuff interrupt this episode of “Chief Swan’s Makeover Show”. Bella pauses at the bottom of the steps to see if everything is copasetic in the dining room, like that Charlie isn’t trying to shoot me with his shotgun and then dodging the ricocheting bullets. When she sees that Charlie is smiling and I’m not cringing behind any furniture she smiles at me.

And just like that I’m the dumbest, most stunned man in the world, standing in the dining room of the Chief’s house gazing at this girl like she’s the Holy freakin’ Grail or some shit. Seriously. I’m standing there locked in her gaze hearing birds sing and angels and shit.

“Hey, uh, Edward?” I hear my sister’s voice cutting into my Bella-trance. “Can we get your help with this stuff?” I wake up from my coma and grab one of the bags Alice is handing me, totally embarrassed.

The good news is that we are able to get out of there without running into Renee, which Alice sees would be totally embarrassing for me. Unlike the rest of my life.

So we get Bella’s room set up with her stuff but my sisters get all “You don’t have any baby stuff” on her and decide to take her to Port Angeles to go shopping. I consider going with them but Emmett reminds me that while I want her to think I’m sensitive and nice to have around, I don’t want her to think that I have a vagina. His words, not mine.

So I pretend I’m going to do manly stuff while they’re out but really I’m going to hang out in her room and touch her stuff in as non-creepy a way possible.

I also spend some time doing some reading about pregnancy and birth and stuff, just so I know what to expect when it happens. Emmett and Jasper have been watching those reality shows where they follow women’s pregnancies and stuff but really, that’s a little too graphic for me. Some things cannot be unseen; you know what I mean?

“Do you think Bella is going to want us to film the birth?” Emmett asks. By now they have moved on past the pregnancy show and are now watching “Pawn Stars.” I swear, that Rick guy has a buddy with like every area of expertise you could think of.

“I don’t really see her being into that,” I say from the dining room where I’m flipping through books on child rearing. 

“Yeah, Bella’s pretty private,” Jasper says. He’s still thinking about how her emotions have been getting harder and harder for him to read. Welcome to my world, Jasper. Bella and her baby are giving me total radio silence. Nothing. Zilch. Nada.

“Not to mention that it’s totally gross,” I add. I mean, I love Bella and I’m sure that every part of her is beautiful but, just…no.

“Come on, Eddie, childbirth is a miraculous, beautiful act!” Emmett is just doing this to piss me off. Dick.

“I don’t know, Em,” Jasper looks contemplative. “Edward’s already the oldest virgin ever. Having his first sight of a woman’s, you know, be in the act of childbirth might turn him off sex forever.” I look at Jasper, thinking about how mad Alice might get if I tore his leg off and hid it. 

My phone buzzes. It’s a text from Alice. You can do better than that. I think about convincing the family to watch “The Joy-Luck Club” again tonight. The last time was a classic. All the women in the house, plus Emmett, sobbing dryly and Jasper rolling in agony in the corner. My phone buzzes again. That’s better.


	15. Someone to Watch Over Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everlasting Muse beta's it.

So our house hasn’t seen this much action since that time in 1949 when Rosalie lost her favorite earring and made life unbearable for us all until we found it. I still don’t think Emmett has told her that he just bought a new one and passed it off as her grandmother’s pearl earring.

There is baby furniture getting put together, stuff getting painted and Emmett and Jasper are even testing all the baby toys. They’ve been doing all this research on which toys are the safest, the most likely to encourage development of creativity and intelligence, the whole nine yards. Emmett is now swearing that the reason he was dumb enough to get almost killed by a bear is that all he had to play with were logs and rodents and stuff. And he insists that since the soldiers I loved to play with as a child were made of lead and apparently painted with, like, poison, he’s surprised I lived to 17 and certainly must have deformed testicles or something.

Like I really need to be worrying about testicle deformities when I could be mind-fucking myself about whether Bella has no interest in me because she’s not into guys who drink blood or it’s my own personal brand of creepiness that puts her off.

So Jasper starts telling me how Bella’s put me in the “friend zone.”

“What the hell is that?” I swear he makes this stuff up. I mean, we don’t sleep so he has plenty of time.

“Like, when she feels comfortable talking to you about stuff and sees you as a friend and not as a romantic possibility,” Jasper explains to me.

“So, I should be less friendly? I should be more of a dick? I don’t get what you’re suggesting.” My siblings really piss me off sometimes. I mean, those assholes had it easy. Jasper walks into a goddamn diner, for Christ’s sake, and Alice just goes, “Oh, you’re it for me,” or whatever. Rose finds a half-dead redneck in the fucking forest, of all places, and that’s it. Poof! You’re mated. No dating. No sitting around wondering if the other person likes you or has you in the freakin’ “friend zone” or the “you seem nice for a stalker zone” or whatever. 

I don’t really have a lot of opportunities to do anything but play hard to get over the next week or so anyway because my sister and mother are dominating Bella’s time so much. They are barely even letting her come to work and when she does it looks more like a pajama party than a detective’s office with all the women hanging out and talking newborn fashion choices and ergonomically correct strollers.

After two week of constant exposure to the women in my family she breathes a big sigh of relief when we get in the car to go to the obstetrician.

“Don’t get me wrong, I love your family and they’re doing a lot for me, but they haven’t left me alone in two weeks.” Bella relaxes into the seat of the Volvo and looks over at me curiously. “Are they always like this?”

“They are pretty excited about the baby. I’m sure Esme told you she had a young son who died and Alice and Rosalie never had a chance to have children. You are giving them an amazing opportunity.”

Bella smiles. “Yeah, I’m glad you guys are so supportive. But Alice has been giving me pedicures. I mean, who’s going to look at my feet? I can’t even see them.”

I have tons of questions I still want to ask but I am really wary of being overly intrusive. Luckily, Dr. Richards doesn’t have that same compulsion and he asks Bella why the information hasn’t been filled out on the father’s medical history. He glances at me with embarrassment because he has apparently figured out that I’m not the father. Like with math or whatever.

“Uh,” Bella looks at the ground, or as much of the ground as she can see from the exam table. She’s clearly embarrassed.

“Is it necessary?” I ask. She shoots me a grateful look. Dr. Richards sighs.

“It would be helpful but not necessary. Perhaps you could send the father a form? That way if you don’t wish to speak to him…”

“Yeah,” Bella says quickly. “I can do that.”

“It would be of benefit to you and your child to know the father’s medical history. I wouldn’t bring it up otherwise. Obviously this is an uncomfortable situation.” I can hear in the doctor’s thoughts that he feels bad for bringing this up and then his next thought stops me in my tracks. “It’s good of him to support another man’s child like this. I wonder if he’ll marry her?”

And there you have it. My new best friend, Dr. Richards OBGYN, has just given me a fantastic idea. Bella may not be crazy about me but would she turn down an opportunity to provide her baby with a stable home with a (vampire) dad? She said herself that it was difficult being pregnant and having no significant other. My selflessness knows no bounds. And, since I’m all noble and crap, she’ll come to love me, right?

But time is of the essence and I have a little prep-work to do for this. I have to find my mom’s ring in the mess of my hastily moved room. I also have to decide on timing. My instinct is to ask her before the baby is born, to capitalize on maximum emotional vulnerability. 

It’s a plan. Thank you, Dr. Richards. 

Bella still seems a little uncomfortable when we leave my new best friend’s office. I look at her with concern.

“Are you alright?” I ask, and she shrugs her shoulders at me.

“Yeah, that was a little embarrassing and I feel bad for making you look like a sucker like that.”

“What do you mean?” I just don’t get the way she thinks sometimes, it’s really disconcerting. Like watching a clown buy beer.

“Well, Dr. Richards must think you’re a pushover, dating a woman who’s pregnant with someone else’s baby.” I shake my head vehemently and laugh.

“Actually, he thinks that I’m a really awesome guy for not caring about that.” She looks at me with surprise. I nod my head. “Seriously. Dude thinks I’m like Mother Theresa or something.” She laughs.

‘Well, if you’re continuing to feel saintly, can I ask you to do something for me?” I gaze at her, willing her to ask me to cherish her forever or make out with her or something. Which I would totally do.

“Can we go to a bookstore on the way home? I don’t want to ask your sisters to take me on a shopping trip for fear I’d never make it home.”

“Of course,” I say, a little disappointed she didn’t ask for something bigger so I could impress her with my largess. 

While in the bookstore I try out walking a little closer to her and then listening for other customers thoughts about us. I am practically getting drunk off of the “What an attractive couple” and “They must be so happy. I wonder when she’s due” thoughts I’m picking up. What can I say? This annoying ability has to be good for something, right?

Anyhow, the “finding the ring” part of the plan goes off without a hitch but I hit a serious snag on the getting time alone with Bella part. My family continues to dominate her attention and refuse to leave me alone with her. If I couldn’t read their thoughts I would be sure they were doing it on purpose.

I finally get the opportunity I’ve been waiting for just five days before her due date. I am at the office brooding over word choices. I am really torn between romantic and practical. I mean, I want my proposal to be memorable and poignant and all that crap. And yet, I feel like I have a better chance of being accepted if I’m pragmatic. You know, “You would feel so much better if you had someone with a penis in your life so your baby will have a dad” kind of thing. But without the “penis” part, of course. I’m not a total animal.

I’m coming up with alternative word choices when I hear her in the outside office.

“Edward?” she calls out and I speed over to the door. She smiles when she sees me.

“Hi! I escaped from this family of crazed vampires. Can I hang out here for a while? Just for the quiet?” I laugh and nod.

“Of course.” I am pondering whether this might be my opportunity. I go into my office and close the door for a second while I try to psych myself up. 

I am less than thrilled by where the office comes in on the “romantic ambiance” scale and decide I’ll ask her if she wants to take a walk. I figure I can find a better spot, a park or a spot in the nearby woods or really just anyplace that doesn’t have an office supply cabinet in it. 

I am fixing my hair futilely in the mirrored surface of my lamp, which makes my face look misshapen in a really unnerving way, and calling out to her, “Bella, do you want to take a walk or something?” when I hear a slight cry from the outer office.

I run into the office to see her leaning over the desk, clutching her stomach.

“Bella, what’s wrong?” I am terrified. She takes a deep, shaky breath and looks up at me.

“Yeah, I would love to take a walk but I think it would be better to drive.” I look at her in confusion. “Edward, I think I might be pregnant,” she says with a slight laugh. 

“I don’t underst…” 

“Edward, I think I’m going into labor. Can you take me to the hospital?” She looks at me like I’m stupid. Which I guess I am. Then when I realize what’s happening I pick her up and start for the door.

“Edward,” she says, as we get to the door. I stop and look at her with concern. “Let’s not attract a lot of unnecessary attention by speed running through the street, OK?” I nod at her, so nervous I can’t even respond.

I get her to the hospital at a somewhat natural speed. I figure I could talk Chief Swan out of any speeding ticket I incurred getting his daughter to the hospital.

What doesn’t surprise me is that my whole family is already there. Goddamn Alice already knew, of course. I get Bella situated and tell her I’m going to call her dad and Dr. Richards. When I see Alice I give her the death-look and start to ask why she didn’t bother warning me. 

Before I even get the words out she grins. “The frantic rush to the hospital is a part of every new father’s experience. I didn’t want to deny you that.” Which is actually kind of sweet, if you think about it.

“I’ll make the calls. You go be with Bella,” Alice shoos me back into the room and I sit back down with Bella.

The nurses step out of the room for a moment and I decide that it’s now or never. I scoot closer to Bella and reach into my pocket for the ring.

“Bella, I don’t want you to have to worry about anything, OK?” She looks at me a little distractedly. I guess this whole labor thing can be a real conversation killer.

“I want you to know that you and the baby are always going to be taken care of and,” I take a big unnecessary breath while I get ready to pop the question. “I am hoping that you will do me the honor of marrying me.” I bust out the ring and she looks at me in surprise. And then she clutches her hand to her stomach again and frowns.

“Edward, that is really chivalrous and everything,” she stops to pant heavily. “But if you want to help me out you could get the nurse back in here and tell her that I’m pretty sure I’m going to have a baby, uh, now.” She clenches her eyes closed and a whimper comes out from between her lips. I jump up frantically but Alice is already pushing the nurses into the room and ushering me out.

That didn’t go as smoothly as I hoped but she didn’t say no, right?


	16. Mickey Finn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My brand-spanking new beta, Betham, was horrified by my run-on sentence but she let me get away with it.

Thomas Charles Swan, six pounds, eleven ounces, is a very special baby. And I don’t just mean that in the “he’s a special baby to me because Bella spawned him and I love her” way. Although that’s true.

No, Thomas is a special baby because, once they finally let the anxious male vampires who’ve been pacing around outside the hospital room in to see his squirmy pinkness, we figure out why Jasper hasn’t been able to sense Bella’s feelings.

And yes, I said “vampires”, plural. As much as Emmett and I try to act like we wait around for human babies to be born every day, we are totally antsy and driving Jasper nuts. Even though Bella thought she was going to pop that baby out right away, that was really just a bunch of wishful thinking on her part. She ended up being in labor for like nine hours, and Jasper was clawing into the waiting room furniture and thinking about chewing the metal brackets that held the television up on the wall.

We kept trying to convince each other to leave, but no one wanted to miss when the baby was born, and then we’d start arguing and then Carlisle would have to come tell us that we were scaring people out of the waiting room and that he was going to kick us out.

So we would all calm down for like three minutes and Emmett would start watching some infomercial and I would beg him to change it and then Jasper would suggest that I go hunt or something and then Emmett would jump on the bandwagon and I would refuse and then I would tell Jasper to go hunt if he was so overwhelmed by my emotions and then he would refuse and then Emmett would yell that he couldn’t hear his infomercial and then Jasper would yell, “What are you going to do with a fucking Pasta Boat anyway?” and then Emmett would start telling him and I would offer to buy him seven Pasta Boats if he would just get the hell out of here for twenty minutes and then he would say that I was the one being a dick and Jasper would say that we were both being dicks and then we would all start yelling and then Carlisle would come back in and tell us that this was our last warning and we would calm down for like three minutes. 

So it was a relief when Esme came out and said that Bella and Thomas were doing well, and that it was ok for us see her and the baby. I might have jabbed Emmett in the throat in my insistence to go in first. What?

So we go piling into her room, and Rose and Alice decide to clear out because it’s a pretty tiny room and seven vampires seemed like a bit much. Chief Swan had been lurking with us for a while, but had had to go get some sleep. 

Bella looked…well, I’d love to say that she looked great but, really? She looked like she’d been run over. But she looked pretty happy, and Thomas was just adorable. I mean, everyone says that babies are cute but, really, some of them just aren’t. Some of them have misshapen heads or faces or that weird baby acne or too much hair. But Thomas was really cute, even if he was a little wrinkly. 

Esme warned us that we could only stay for a few minutes, because Bella and the baby were tired. 

Emmett kind of leaned over Bella and looked at Thomas. “Wow, he’s really tiny, huh?”

Bella blinked at him and then gave him a half smile before saying, “Yeah, Emmett, they start out that way so they can fit into baby clothes.” I laughed, and she looked at me shyly.

“Edward, do you want to hold him?” I am a bit torn by this. I really want to hold the baby because: a) it would help Bella to see me as an appropriate father substitute and, b) he’s kind of cute and pink and that makes you want to touch stuff, right? But I’m afraid to hold the baby because: a) I might freak him out with my coldness or what a scary vampire I am and, b) what if I do it wrong and break him or hold him upside down or something?

I am wavering, staring at the wrapped-up lump in Bella’s arms, when Esme takes the initiative and picks him up and hands him to me gently. 

It’s pretty amazing. He’s all warm and tiny, and his eyes are part way open but he clearly can’t really see anything, and he just does drooly things with his mouth. I’m pretty sure I’m staring at him like he’s made of frickin’ diamonds or something. 

You look like a total pussy right now! Emmett smirks at me. I glare at him. I don’t really care about how much of a pussy I look like; I mean, I have already been totally emasculated by proposing to Bella and having her blow me off, so I figure my balls are already on sale in the gift shop down stairs. 

“Emmett, why don’t you hold him,” Jasper suggests, and I can tell he’s got something on his mind because he’s looking at Thomas and I speculatively. I give him an inquiring look, but he signals to me to hand Emmett the baby.

Which I do, reluctantly. Then Jasper gestures to Emmett and thinks, Can you hear Emmett’s thoughts?

To my surprise, the vapid inner workings of Emmett’s mind are suddenly dimmed way down. Not gone, but much quieter. I look back at Jasper. He shakes his head subtly. I can’t get a strong read on his feelings, either.

“Jasper, do you want to hold him?” Jasper shakes his head when Esme asks him. “Not yet. I will, though.” He smiles at Bella, who doesn’t seem offended. Actually, she seems kind of comatose so Esme ushers us out of there and insists that we leave the hospital before Carlisle comes back, because he’s apparently a bit angry at us for the damage we did to the waiting room.

We reluctantly bid Bella and Thomas goodbye, neither one of whom seem to care that we’re leaving, and go home.

“So, I think that Thomas is some kind of shield, but he can shield thoughts and emotions and he can do it by touch.” Jasper says to me once we’re in the car.

“Yeah, that sounds right. Except it’s not perfect. I could get a little bit of Emmett’s idiocy, but I had to probe for it,” I add.

“Dude! I knew you wanted to probe me!” Emmett says. Of course. I can’t even get irritated because I walked right into that one.

“This is interesting. We’ll have to talk it over with Carlisle.” 

“Are you able to pick up Bella’s emotions now?” I ask Jasper. He nods.

“Well, you’ll have to let me know what’s going on there sometime, because I am clueless.” Jasper looks a little embarrassed at this. He rubs the back of his neck, like he’s got, what? A vampire itch?

“Yeah, the missus mentioned that you got yourself shot down.” I shake my head in disbelief.

“She saw it happening, huh?” I ask. Jasper laughs nervously.

“Yeah, but she said that it was ‘necessary,’” Jasper does these little air quotes. Which look as effeminate as you might imagine they do. Emmett laughs.

“I don’t know if it was ‘necessary’ for Eddie to get rejected anymore than he already has been. I mean, the guy’s already…”

“You know, Emmett,” I interrupt. “I’d like you to reflect on your marriage before you start talking about rejection. I don’t know if you recall 1987? You know, when your wife made you sleep outside for like six months for making fun of her dress?”

Jasper laughs and adds, “Yeah, remember that time in 1972 when she made him wear that light blue suit because it matched her earrings! And then he got too close to the candles and…”

“Ok! Enough!” Emmett roared over our laughter. “I’m sorry, Eddie. I hope your human agrees to marry you, or at least get freaky with you. It’d be nice having her and the baby around.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking we could just have you carry him around in a snuggly or something so I don’t have to feel your feelings of rejection and angst all the time.” Jasper says to me, as he pulls up to the house and we get out.

“Dude, you know what a snuggly is,” Emmett starts snickering. Jasper shoots him a dirty look.

“Yeah, that won’t look weird or anything. A vampire with a baby strapped to his chest.” I roll my eyes at Jasper, even though the idea has a sort of sick appeal for me.

So Esme gives me the heads-up that proposing to someone while they are getting ready to give birth is probably not excellent planning. I wish someone had mentioned that before, but I figure I’ll just wait until I can talk with Bella again so I can reiterate my offer. 

With my usual selflessness and altruism, I figure the sooner the better. I mean, what better time to offer to rescue a woman than when she’s in the throes of her initial few weeks of caring for a new infant? It’s like vulnerability-city, right?

Except that my family has nothing better to do than to hover around her and the baby, like, all the time. And they don’t sleep. After two weeks, Bella finally tells them that it might be a good idea if Thomas learns what it feels like to be in a crib or bed.

“I swear, this kid is never going to learn how to sleep without being held,” she shakes her head the third time Rose came into her room in one morning to hold him. “You guys can’t hold him until he’s sixteen. He’ll have to learn to walk if he ever wants to date, right?” 

Rose laughs, embarrassed, and pulls Emmett with her out of the room Bella and Thomas share.

“Can I stay if I promise not to pick him up?” I ask her. Bella smiles at me.

“Of course. I hope I didn’t offend Rose, but this baby needs to know how to go to sleep without someone holding him.”

“Of course,” I nod. Bella is checking her email and I hear her give a little sigh.

“What’s up?” She looks at me with a minute frown on her face.

“It’s Jacob Black. The...my other supernatural friends want to see Thomas, but they don’t want to come out to ‘Castle Dracula.’ They want me to bring Thomas out there.”

My temptation is to scream “Absolutely Not!” and throw a big tantrum here but I doubt that’s going to go over well, given that I have, like, no right to boss her around. 

As nonchalantly as I can, I say, “Well, when you’re ready to start introducing Thomas to the outside world, I can drive you as far as town. I’m not really welcome on the rez, though.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that.” Bella starts to type a message back to the smelly teenager. I wander around with forced casualness until she’s done and then I say, as lightly as I can, as if I have no opinion as to her answer, “Have you given any thought to what we talked about?” Bella looks at me blankly for a moment. Then a flicker of recognition comes across her face.

“Yeah, Edward. I think it’s a great idea. I told you that a month ago,” she shakes her head at me with a smile.

“A month ago? What are you talking about? I just asked you twelve days ago.” I frown at her. Did a marriage proposal slip out of my mouth when I wasn’t paying attention? Is that even possible for a vampire? I mean, we don’t forget anything, and we don’t do drugs. Except that time that Emmett ate that lion that Jasper had given a massive dose of animal tranquilizers. That was the year that Carlisle said we couldn’t go on any more safaris.

“You’re talking about switching us over to Macs, right?” Bella looks at me like I’m stupid. Which I might be. It all depends on how much time and energy you think is worth spending on a girl who exhibits little or no interest in you. I don’t think I want you to answer that.

“No,” I look at her pointedly. Then I gesture to my ring finger and raise my eyebrows at her. A look of chagrin crosses her face.

“Oh, that,” Bella says quietly, looking embarrassed. She’s embarrassed?! “I hope you didn’t think I was rude, I was a little distracted.” I wave my hand at her dismissively.

“No, Esme explained to me that the timing of my question was poor. I would like to know what you think.” I am the picture of cool, waiting for her to respond. 

“Well, Edward, I think that you are really a gentleman, and I appreciate your kindness and your concern for Thomas and I.” She pauses and I know I’m totally getting shot down again. The image of a warplane, plummeting to ground, belching flames and oily smoke fills my head. And by “warplane” I mean “my heart.”

“Don’t you think that marriage should have...Don’t you think that people should marry people that they are attracted to? I think that intimacy is an important part of a good marriage.” She is incredibly uncomfortable about having this conversation with me and I am about to jump out the window so I don’t throw myself on the ground and try to cry.

She’s not attracted to me. She doesn’t want to marry me because she wants to have an actual sex life with someone who isn’t me. 

I think I manage to leave the room without being a total abrupt dick, but I’m not sure. I go downstairs and am getting ready to storm out of the house like the heartbroken adolescent that I am in this moment, when Emmett claps a hand on my shoulder.

“Sorry, Sport,” he says, with genuine sympathy.

“You heard that? Great!” I shake him off and keep walking towards the door. Not only did I get shot down for real by the woman I’m sure is the love of my endless, ridiculous life, but my whole family probably heard it. I hope there’s a campfire nearby so I can throw myself into it, regardless of how many Boy Scouts are watching.

“Look on the bright side,” Emmett says, following me. Right now the only “bright side” I’m seeing is that campfire. I’m about to ruin someone’s rendition of “Kumbaya.”

“Emmett, I am so skeptical about there being a ‘bright side’ to this,” I slow down slightly only to take out some of my frustration on my brother. It’s like “emotional tag.”

“I just got an email from the cousins. They’re coming down early to check out the squirmy one. They’ll be here next week.” 

“How is that good? Tanya trying to stick her tongue down my throat all the time is only going to make me more miserable!” That’s it. I’m going on vacation. Anywhere. The surface of the sun is looking pretty good right now.

“Well, sometimes women don’t appreciate something until someone else has it. Maybe if Bella thinks that you and Tanya are an item, she’ll realize that she wants you after all.” Emmett sounds pretty sure of himself. But then he sounded pretty confident about that whole “your vintage 1968 Mustang will totally function as an off-road vehicle” thing back in ‘94. I still miss that car.

I stop and look at him warily. “Do you think it’ll work?” 

Emmett shrugs his shoulders. “What have you got to lose?”

Only my pride, potentially the respect of my family, and - if Tanya gets the wrong idea - the contents of my stomach and/or my virtue.

It’s worth a shot.


	17. Kiss Me Deadly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Betham is a saint who brings commas to the otherwise comma-less masses.

Kiss Me, Deadly  
Tanya, Irina and Kate arrive the next week in a cacophony of luggage and swarming cloud of perfume and a stampede of their high-heeled leather boots. The sisters are the truth behind the succubus myth, and they are like sex on legs. Watching them walk into the house is like watching a music video.  
That is, until they see Thomas. At which point they drop their bags, squeal, and start begging to hold him. It’s pretty entertaining to watch, actually. Thomas is drooling on Irina’s suede coat and pulling Tanya’s hair, and they adore him. Seriously, the next time I start a business I’m going to rent human babies to vampires. He’s like vampire crack.  
I’ve been making myself a little scarce in my profound embarrassment about throwing myself at Bella and having her shoot me down. I’m just not sure how to proceed, to be honest. Vampires don’t just change their minds like humans do. I’m pretty sure I’m stuck like this now. The only thing I can think of to do is to try to wear down her resistance with my continuous, unrelenting presence. Romantic, huh? Maybe I’ll throw in some candles.  
Plus, Alice is no help whatsoever. She gives me just enough encouragement to not give up, but not enough to make me feel any better. She just keeps saying that she needs to stay out of it. And then blocking me with the most annoying thoughts. I mean, she knows I hate Virginia Wolfe.  
Day two of the occupation rolls around and I’m sitting in the living room, reading Sherlock Holmes - my version of comfort food - when Bella comes in with Thomas. Apparently, she was able to wrest him away from his vampire fan club by explaining that he needed to eat.  
“Hi, is it ok if I stay in here?” she asks me shyly. I nod. “Of course,” I say, gesturing to the other couch, but she takes a seat next to me and stretches out, to my surprise. She props herself up with her head next to me on a bunch of those annoying little throw pillows that Esme is in love with. It feels oddly domestic and cozy.  
Bella lulls Thomas back to sleep and then lets out a yawn.  
“Will you read to me?” she asks, looking at me over her shoulder. She could be asking for my leg and I would give it to her if she asked like that.  
I read to her for a few minutes before she interrupts me.  
“Edward? Irina and Tanya and Kate? They’re not really your cousins, right?” She’s twisted herself around so she’s looking at me.  
“No. They’re not sisters, either. It’s just that we prefer to think of ourselves as a family rather than a ‘coven.’ That’s what groups of vampires usually call themselves, but they tend to be wilder, more aggressive. I think it has to do with us not preying on humans. It makes us more peaceful, able to have caring relationships.” You know, if we can get anyone to go out with us. But I’m not bitter.  
“Oh,” she says, but I can tell she isn’t done. “So if you wanted to have a relationship with one of them, you could.”  
I nod. She frowns at me.  
“Then why don’t you? I mean, they’re beautiful and they share your, you know, values and they seem really nice. You could be, what do you call it? Mates?”  
“Well, you don’t chose a mate, Bella. Someone is your mate or they’re not. It’s like the concept of soul mates. You don’t control it.” I take a deep breath. Bella pushing me on the sisters is just making me miserable. It’s like your wife signing you up on an online dating site. Uncomfortable.  
Speaking of misery and discomfort, Tanya walks in at just that moment. She sees us and pauses, a curious look on her face. I can’t read what she’s thinking, though; or, rather, I can’t decipher it. It’s a series of faces, men and women. And Tanya’s been around for, like, centuries, so she’s known lots of people. I don’t understand the context; but then, sometime, the murkier Tanya’s thoughts are the less likely I am to be grossed out.  
“Hi, Tanya,” Bella says, and she gets up. “I’m going to go take a nap.” She picks up Thomas gently and leaves the room.  
I frown at Tanya. Then I remember I’m supposed to encourage her advances.  
“Hey, Tanya,” I say, giving her a smile that I hope is alluring and not creepy. I’m not exactly an experienced flirt.  
“Edward, I’m sorry I interrupt,” Tanya’s Russian accent hasn’t gotten weaker in centuries of speaking English. When I’ve questioned this, she’s said, “Man does not care what comes out of my mouth, really, just what goes in,” accompanied by some really frighteningly specific porn imagery. You can see why I’ve learned not to ask her too many questions.  
“No, it’s no big deal. You weren’t interrupting anything.” I wave my hand casually, and she looks at me with a frown. I take a step closer to her and touch her elbow.  
“Come sit down, Tanya. Tell me how you’ve been.” I give her another smile and Tanya shakes her head with disgust.  
“You know I always like you very much, Edward?” She crosses her arms and looks at me with a raised eyebrow. I nod.  
“I decide last time you turn me down, you are little boy, not interested in such things. Now I see you have grown up, you have woman you love.” Tanya gestures to where Bella had been sitting. “And you give me smile? Say ‘Tanya, talk with me,’ like you do not have pretty girl who likes you? I think you are very stupid, now.”  
“You don’t know what’s going on here at all, Tanya.” God, she pisses me off! She can’t even be counted on to be appropriately slutty! “Bella has no interest in me.”  
“So you are doing clumsy flirting with me for no reason?”  
I shake my head. “Emmett said that maybe if she saw someone else being interested in me, she would change her mind!” Wow, saying it out loud like that really makes it sound dumb.  
“You think Emmett is stupid for many years now, but you decide to listen to him? Both of you are stupid men.” Tanya is shaking her head in disgust. I have disgusted Tanya. Tanya, who has shown me her purchases from adult book stores. Tanya, who lived through the middle ages. Tanya, who has lived in Las Vegas. This is a new low point for me.  
“I’m sorry, Tanya. It was wrong for me to manipulate you like that.”  
“I don’t care you manipulate me. It makes me angry that you are smart man and acting very stupid.” She makes a huffing noise at me. “I try to fix things for you. You promise not to screw up with little Thomas’s mother.”  
“Tanya, she doesn’t like me. I proposed to her. Twice. She said no.” Tanya glares at me.  
“Edward, I have sex with many, many people. Men, women, vampire, maybe other things.” I shudder at the image that pops into Tanya’s head. “I am not mind-reader but I know liking person.” She turns away in a huff and walks out, probably to giggle with her sisters about what a moron I am. And then have sex with something.  
I’m not going to lie, at this point, given the choice between staying at home so more people can make fun of me and going to work where I can at least pick the music, I go to work the next day. Plus the house is getting pretty crowded, and I’ve mentioned that I’m living in a closet, right?  
So I return some calls and check emails and just generally pretend I’m a productive member of society. The problem is that I am totally unmotivated by being here, fighting crime, when Bella’s in MY bedroom, potentially nursing. Yeah, I know that was pervy, but give me a break.  
After two hours of pretending I care about my job, I understand people who abuse office machines. This is really soul-deadening when you want to be somewhere else. I guess if I was out there detecting or whatever it’d be different.  
Then I get a text message from Alice: YOU’RE AT WORK, RIGHT?  
I key in: YES. WHY?  
I get no response. WHY?? I type in again.  
They’ve probably just decided to move the “bag on Edward” party to a new location. I sigh and go out to the office to see if I can find the name of the website designer Alice asked me to call. I’m rummaging through the drawers of Bella’s desk when I hear someone coming up the steps.  
The door opens and Bella walks in.  
You know how I said that watching the cousins enter the house was like watching a music video? Well, this is like watching one of those scenes in the movies where you hear music and time slows down and there’s a wind machine and stuff. Which is crazy because I’m a vampire and I don’t get disoriented or experience auditory hallucinations. Still, that’s what happens when Bella walks in.  
She’s wearing some kind of denim skirt and a button-up shirt and I only notice this because she looks really…well, I don’t want to use the word “nice” because she looks better than “nice.” It’s kind of a sexier outfit than I’ve ever seen her wear. I am staring at her legs because I think it might be only like the third time I’ve seen them, and then I realize that I’m staring at her legs so I try to move my eyes up to somewhere they might stay respectably when they get caught on her breasts. Which is not a more respectable place for me to stare but she’s got like one more button unbuttoned than she normally would and so then I’m staring at her cleavage because I’m a pig.  
When I drag my eyes up to her face I expect to see disgust or anger or something but she just looks mildly surprised.  
“Hi,” she says. “I convinced them to let me come to work for a few hours. I was getting cabin-fever.” She smiles at me and starts to walk towards where I am at her desk.  
I realize that the thing that’s different is that Bella has made more of an effort with her appearance than she usually does. I suspect Alice. I mean, I think that she always looks pretty, but today she’s got make-up on and I’ve never seen her dressed like this. She’s usually pretty casual. In fact, there’s been quite a few tense moments since she’s moved in where she insists that new mothers have the right to dress like slobs and Alice tells her that she has vampire nannies so she has no excuse to look like a hobo.  
She has to walk around me to get to her desk chair and, to my surprise, she runs her fingers lightly across my shoulders as she passes. I look at her curiously.  
“I was just looking for that guy’s number that Alice wanted to do the website.” I glance at her as she turns on her computer. I really should think about getting her a Mac. After not being turned on for almost a month, her PC is taking a lifetime to do virus scans and shit.  
“I think I have an email from him,” she says, tapping her fingers as she waits. She smiles at me again and this time I get a subtle eyelash flutter. I swear I have taken hallucinogens. Vampire LSD. Hallucinogenic toad blood.  
“Yeah, uh…great.” I watch her warily as she opens up her mail program. She pulls up an email and points to the screen.  
“Is this it?” As she points to it she slides the computer towards the edge of the desk closest to her, effectively blocking it with her body. I am forced to stand up and lean across her to see the email. Despite my super-vampire vision, this puts me level to her cleavage. Which I am staring at. Then I look at her face to see that she isn’t looking at the computer, either. She’s watching me watching her boobs. I am perplexed.  
“Yepthatlookslikeit,” I say, jumping up and hightailing it into my office, as only a totally confused undead teenager can. I start pacing, pulling on my hair and contemplating calling Alice to try to figure out what the hell is going on with Bella. Damn her impermeable, lead-lined skull!  
I spend a half an hour not doing any productive work unless you count wringing my hands and spying on her as she answers email. I am tapping my fingers on the window sill and still trying to figure out what to do next when she walks into the office. She leans against my desk and does that hair-toss thing that girls do, except that I’ve never seen Bella do it before.  
“I don’t really have anything pressing to do,” she says, with that slow smile and little eyelash flutter thing again. “Is there anything I can do for you, Edward?” The inflection she puts on “Edward” is the final nail in the “she’s not really flirting with me, is she?” coffin. Or maybe it’s the emphasis on “do.”  
I look at her for a moment, considering my options. Then I walk towards her slowly, tilting my head at her curiously. When I get to where she’s leaning on the edge of my desk, I lean forward and put my hands down on either side of her, trapping her.  
“Bella, …are you flirting with me?” She looks at me wide-eyed for a second, and then tentatively nods. I nod, taking this new plot twist in.  
“Do you mind my asking why?” She looks intimidated but I refuse to let her off the hook. I proposed, for Christ’s sake! Twice! She can handle a little embarrassment.  
“I, uh…didn’t really understand that you were…interested in me. It just seems a little improbable, what with you ...” She makes a gesture in my direction and raises her eyebrows. ‘And I’m…” She points her finger back at herself and makes a slight huffing noise. “You know what I mean?” I nod again slowly, planning my next move. I am so far out of my comfort zone I might as well be selling Tupperware right now.  
“So,” I lean in a little more. I can hear the increase in her heart rate. “Does this mean that you’re willing to consider…” She cuts me off.  
“Going out on a date with you?” she asks, with a smirk.  
“Uh, yes, of course,” I realize that I have been premature. Humans go on dates; vampires see each other and skip the “dinner and a movie” stage and go right to picking out overcast locales to live in. I take a deep breath and start over.  
“Bella, I wonder if you would be willing to go out on a date with me?” She smiles at me. It’s like stepping into the sunlight from a dark cave. No bat jokes, please.  
“I’d love to,” she says. I grin at her. She smiles back at me until eventually she is forced to clear her throat and gesture to the fact that I have her trapped against the desk. Not that that’s a horrible place to be but, again, I get ahead of myself.  
I step away from the desk to let her go back to work. She gives me another smile.  
“So, um, I guess you don’t have anything else for me to do?”  
“Just go out with me,” I answer. She nods and looks around.  
“So, I guess I’ll get going,” she says. “I’ll see you at home?”  
I nod at her, still grinning like an idiot. ‘Yep,” I say. “Is six o’clock tomorrow night good?”  
She smiles. “Um, yeah, that would be good. I can’t be out for too long, though”  
“Of course,” I say. “Thomas.”  
“Yeah, uh, because of Thomas.” She is backing towards the door. “Well, I’ll see you at home.”  
I just stand there with my hand up, waving goodbye to her, stupid grin on my face.  
Then, suddenly, she walks back in and leans up and kisses me on the cheek. She smiles, blushing, and runs back out.  
I, on the other hand, have just gotten my first kiss from a girl. So I just stand there like the complete dumbstruck freak that I am.


	18. Forget It, Jake.  It's Chinatown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Betham? She’s the bestest beta a girl could want. Seriously.

So, I have this list of things that I have to talk to Bella about:

1) The fact that I watched her through her bedroom window at night for several months.

2) The fact that, if the Volturi find out about her, we’ll all be in big trouble.

3) The temptation that I have to track down Thomas’s father and kill him.

I have my list written on a spreadsheet on my computer since the whiteboard seems a bit indiscreet. It’s color-coded, and I have spaces to fill in when I talk about each item so I can have that sense of achievement you get by checking something off your “to-do” list.

In the meantime, I have a shorter and somewhat more pressing list of things I have to do before tomorrow night’s date.

1) Figure out an appropriate date activity for a new human mom and her vampire date.

2) Find whoever talked to Bella and thank them profusely.

3) Get totally anxious about my apparent lack of wooing skills.

4) Think about all the physical contact I want to have with Bella and then get totally frustrated because I’m inexperienced and a vampire and I’m convinced it’s never going to work.

The tenor of this particular list started to go downhill fast, so I abandoned it and went online and ordered flowers. Which was apparently the right thing to do, because I immediately got a call from Alice.

“Nice job. She’ll love them.” Alice reassured me.

“Are you sure? I was going to get a bigger arrangement, but…”

“No, that one would be too much. It’d be annoying. So, there’s a theatre showing ‘Chinatown’ in Port Angeles tomorrow night at 6 pm. You could get dinner afterwards at Bella Italia or you could get Chinese and eat it back here. I could set up a table on the porch for you guys and kick the vampires out so you could have some privacy.”

“What’s the better choice, Alice?” I’m not even gonna pretend to trust my own judgment on this one.

“Mu Shu Pork out on the patio. A lot more privacy, and Bella won’t be as anxious about Thomas. We’ll go hunting.”

“Thank you, Alice. I owe you.” A thought occurs to me. “Are you the one who talked to Bella?” Alice laughs.

“No, that one was all Tanya. You should thank her.”

“Yeah, I will.” This almost makes up for that time she took me to that party in San Francisco in 1978. Almost.

Things are strangely quiet when I get home. The cousins have gone to spend the night in Seattle with Alice so she can take them shopping, and Carlisle’s still at work. I find Bella with Thomas in her room. The room formerly known as “my room.”

“Hey,” she says, smiling at me sweetly. I try to keep my eyes averted in case she’s nursing or some shit, but then I realize she’s not. She’s just talking with him quietly and playing with his hands.

“What are you telling him?” I take a seat on the couch.

“I was just, uh, telling him about his family. I read this thing that said that talking to babies is really important. Something about their language acquisition.”

“So you’re telling him about Charlie and Renee and stuff?” I ask, in my best passive-aggressive fashion. Yeah, Bella, tell me about Thomas’s family. Please.

“Well, Charlie and Renee and you guys,” she says. “I hope that’s not too presumptuous.”

“Hello? Marriage proposals?” I hold up my left hand and point at my ring finger. “How could you be overstepping after my two marriage proposals?”

“But those weren’t real,” she says, her voice dropping lower when she notices that Thomas is falling asleep.

“How do you know they weren’t real?” I whisper at her. “Do you think I’m just trying to get the tax deduction?”

“I think you were trying to be a gentleman, trying to take care of Thomas and I,” she whispers back at me, blushing. I shake my head at her.

“You don’t get that I…” I am trying to think of a good verb to use. “Worship” seems a little over-the-top. “…like you, do you?” She shakes her head this time.

“I know you think you like me, but you don’t really know me that well, Edward.”

I am about to rebut her argument with evidence gleaned from many evenings of stalking, but I am saved from my own stupidity by Esme coming in.

“Bella, honey, I made you some dinner. Let me hold Thomas for you.” Bella hands the baby over with a smile and tells us she’s going to go clean up for dinner.

I wander downstairs and out onto the patio where my siblings are sitting. They do that sudden silence thing where you can tell that they were talking about me.

“What?” I say, looking around at their faces. Emmett and Rose argue with their eyes for a second while Jasper looks at the ground.

“We were just thinking that ‘Chinatown’ might not be a good choice for a first date,” Emmett finally spits out.

“Emmett thinks that it’s not a good idea. I don’t see the problem.” Rose flips her hair over her shoulder. “I mean, it’s one of your favorites and you want her to get to know you, right?” I nod.

“It’s just so depressing and that ending and the incest…” Emmett trails off.

“I think it’s an amazing homage to film noir. Didn’t it win an Academy Award?” Jasper asks.

“Yeah, Best Screenplay. It lost Best Picture to ‘The Godfather II’. Eleven nominations, though.” I tell him. “Plus, Bella likes Jack Nicholson. She and Alice were watching “The Shining’ and she said she thought he was a good actor.”

“So rent ‘As Good As It Gets’! I just think it’s such a depressing movie for a first date.”

“Ugh, ‘The Shining’. That was a scary-ass movie.” Jasper shudders.

“I know, right?” Rosalie’s eyes get wide. “When those two little girls show up in the hallway?” Jasper nods emphatically.

“Can we get on topic here?” Emmett says. “I’m trying to save Eddie from making a big mistake! He got Best Actor for ‘As Good As It Gets.’ It’s totally first-date appropriate.”

“Who do you think will remind her of Edward more?” Rosalie asks Jasper. “The gay artist or the guy with OCD?” Jasper laughs.

“Probably the dog.” He and Rosalie laugh as Emmett and I glare at them.

“What’s so funny?” Carlisle steps out onto the patio.

“Edward wants to take Bella to see ‘Chinatown,’” Emmett tells him, like he’s tattling on me. Carlisle grimaces.

“Roman Polanski, huh? You’re not worried about the whole sexually assaulting a teenager thing?”

“That was after he made ‘Chinatown.’”

“Wait, what about making me get rid of my Cat Stevens CDs after he endorsed the fatwa on Salman Rushdie? You’re such a hypocrite!” Jasper’s the one upset this time.

“That was an excuse. I told you that because Cat Stevens sucks.”

“I liked the ‘Harold and Maude’ soundtrack,” Rosalie says, thoughtfully.

“Anyway, it was Alice’s idea to go see ‘Chinatown.’” I turn to Rose. “And that soundtrack’s good the first time but it gets seriously annoying after that.” She shrugs her shoulders.

“Alice told you to take her to go see it?” Emmett looks at me skeptically. I nod.

“Have any of you ever been on a date?” I look around at the circle of my family. “Because, seriously, I am getting a lot of advice from some people who found their life partners in morgues and stuff. No offense, Carlisle.”

Carlisle smiles. “None taken. Esme must have dated her first husband. You could talk to her.”

“What about me?” Emmett says. Rose huffs at him and rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, getting drunk and kissing your cousin after the big harvest doesn’t count.”

“Yeah, and your experience was so much better? I seem to recall…” I see what Emmett’s about to say and I know I have to stop him. I grab one of the wrought iron patio chairs and, yelling, “What’s that?” and pointing up into the sky, I bash him in the knees.

“Goddamnit! What was that for Edward?” I take off into the woods and Emmett follows me, fuming, pulling mangled bits of chair off his shins.

Running ahead of him, I yell, “You realize how stupid what you were about to say was? You’re really going to comment on her fiancé assaulting her?” Emmett slows down as he realizes that I just saved him a ton of marital grief.

“Oh, yeah, that would have been bad. Thanks, bro.” I slow down to let him catch up with me and he slaps me on the shoulder. “You really saved my bacon there.”

“Yeah, no problem. It’s kinda lame to have to repair the house after you guys fight. Plus, I can tell you’re just trying to help me with Bella. Even if you’re completely wrong and ridiculously misguided.”

“Yeah, I want her to get to know you, but maybe just the cool parts first? Then, once she loves you back you can let her know what a maladjusted, emo loser you are.”

“Thanks, Em,”

So the next night I decide to do the traditional date thing and knock on the front door, instead of just her/my bedroom door. Call me old-fashioned.

Bella looks lovely and she thanks me for the flowers, which were delivered while I was at work. We get in the Volvo and start to drive to Port Angeles. I’m pretty pleased with myself that I don’t need to have the windows rolled down.

“Have you given any more thought to going back to school? You know that my family would be thrilled to take care of Thomas while you’re in class.” Charlie has been mentioning it every time he comes over to see them.

“Yeah, I think that I will, but I’ll probably wait until the spring. I don’t think that I want to be away from Thomas all day until then.” I nod, all the while working out the logistics. If she is in school surrounded by human boys all day, what if she decides she likes guys with pulses? What about when she wants to get her Bachelor’s Degree? She can only take her lower division stuff in Port Angeles at the Community College, she’ll have to move farther away eventually. What then?

I figure it would be an easy sell to get my family to move closer to wherever she goes, but how cool is she gonna think it if I am following her to all her classes? Which reminds me that I haven’t mentioned my nocturnal observation habits to her yet.

“Edward?” She touches my arm. “Are you ok?” I look at her and realize that I was totally sitting there mind-fucking myself. While on a date with Bella. I’m doing something that I’ve wanted to do forever and I’m spending the time being a neurotic freak.

“Yeah, I was just thinking about some stuff. Sorry.” I smile at her. I spend the rest of the drive telling her about the movie we are about to see. Minus the parts about the director liking teenage girls.

Bella actually really likes “Chinatown”, although she admits that the ending is kind of depressing. Which leads to a good conversation about what I love about film noir; the idea that even some of the worst-seeming characters can do something to redeem themselves. I think it bodes well for me.

She even let me hold her hand for the second half of the movie.

We arrive back to a relatively quiet house.

“Where is everyone?” she asks. I listen for a minute.

“Esme and Carlisle are upstairs watching Thomas, and everyone else has gone out for a few hours. There’s dinner on the patio for you.”

“What about…” I interrupt her.

“Esme will come get you if Thomas needs you.” She nods, and I lead her out to the patio. My sister - my favorite, brilliant, perfect sister - has outdone herself. The patio is lit with candles and dinner is set out for Bella. She must have timed it perfectly, because the food is even still warm.

“So I have to ask, what did Tanya tell you that made you, you know, do…”

“Flirt with you awkwardly?” I nod. Bella bites her lip and fidgets with her food.

“She told me that she’s been trying to get into your coffin for, like, sixty years and that I should, um, stop being stupid.” I laugh.

“I have to admit to being a little preoccupied lately,” she continued. “And you’re, you know, gorgeous and immortal and stuff. Why would I assume that you were interested in me?”

“I showed up at prom and threatened your date.” I look at her with my eyebrow raised.

“He was being a pig. You’re a gentleman.”

“Not really,” I say, before I can stop myself. She laughs and takes another bite of her chow mein.

“Anyway, you can hardly blame me for being skeptical. I’m a teenage mother. I’m quiet and plain and come with stretch marks and I can’t date without a babysitter. I’m not really the best catch.” She smiles at me ruefully.

“You’re beautiful and brave and smart and I love Thomas almost as much as I love you.” There. It slipped out. She’s frozen with her chop sticks mid-air. I desperately tried to think of a way to stuff the words back into my mouth or pretend I was quoting movie dialogue or had been temporarily possessed. No dice.

“I…uh…I’m…” Bella’s mouth opened and closed several times in surprise. I decided that I had committed to this course of action and that I would follow it through to the bitter end.

“I know you think it’s because I don’t know you that well, but I actually know you quite a bit better than you think. Do you remember when you first moved here and we saw each other in front of the bookstore?” She nodded. ‘Well, Emmett and Jasper had to come get me, because Alice saw me biting you, you know, drinking your blood.” She nods again.

“You’re what they call a ‘singer’. It means your blood smells way better to me than anyone else’s. So we decided that we had to keep track of you, you know, so I wouldn’t encounter you on accident and eat you, and the more I learned about you, you know, from our surveillance, the more I liked you.” Bella was just kind of frozen there, with a look I would describe as shocked, horrified, confused chagrin.

Fuck it, I figure as long as I’ve shot myself in the foot I might as well cut said foot off and set it on fire, too.

“Then I started keeping an eye on you at night, you know, hanging around outside your bedroom window.”

“We also stole some of your sweaters. So I could get used to your scent.”

“Which totally doesn’t bother me anymore. In fact, I quite like the way you smell. And everything else about you.”

The longer she’s quiet, the more I seem to say.

“I know I’m making you uncomfortable but I don’t seem to be able to stop talking and I’ll just, uh, I’ll just go away because I probably seem even creepier than I already did, you know, being an old-ass vampire and everything.”

She holds up her hand and takes a deep breath. After a moment she speaks. A long moment.

“That’s a lot to take in, Edward, I’m sorry I, uh, I just need to…” She puts her fork down and gets up. “I had a really nice time, but I’m having a little trouble with some of…I need some time to think about…You watched me through my bedroom window?” Her voice gets louder and she’s mad. Like, really mad.

“Yeah. I’m sorry, No, wait. I’m not sorry about that.” I get up to face her, because I figure this might be my last chance to explain to her who I am. “I mean, I am sorry because it was wrong to violate your privacy like that and you’re clearly a very private person. But, I’m not sorry because I fell in love with you and I’m 110 years old and I’ve been frozen in this lonely teenager’s body for like 90 years. You have no concept of what it’s like to feel unchanging and alone. And my family are all mated and happy and in love and I just sit there with my books and movies and 1950’s jazz. And then this pregnant teenager shows up and she terrifies and fascinates me and the more I get to know her the more I realize that maybe I don’t have to be like that anymore.”

Bella is frozen, watching me. I sigh and slump back down into my chair.

“So I don’t expect you to love me back and I understand that you’re angry and I know that this is a lot to ask but I have never asked for anything, never wanted anything for myself. And I want this. I just want to take care of you and Thomas. You two make me feel like there was some point to this whole long-ass meaningless existence. You make me feel. Period. Do you think you could let me take care of you guys and just pretend you don’t think I’m a total creep? For just a little while longer?”

I stop talking and just watch her. She’s got a different set of emotions running across her face and I’m certainly hoping that one of them is pity.

Then she takes a step closer.

“I’m still angry that you were watching outside my window. That’s pretty unnerving.” I start to talk but she holds up her hand again.

“Let me finish, OK?” I nod. “You’re right, I’m not in love with you. You’ve had a little bit of a jump on me, you know?” She smiles, and I manage to pull my face into something that I hope looks like a smile. “I am still getting accustomed to the fact that you even look at me that way. I’m going to need some time to get used to this.” I nod, because she’s not saying she’s leaving. That’s good news, right?

“If we’re going to do this you need to be honest with me, and no more weird stalking shit, right?” I nod. She said “do this”! Does that mean she’s staying? I open my mouth to ask but she raises her hand again.

“You need to let me get to know you and we need to talk about some stuff, right? Like Thomas’s dad and, uh, vampire stuff.” She gestures to me as she says this and a blush appears on her cheeks.

“What kind of vampire stuff?” I ask with a smile. I have a feeling I know where she’s headed, but I want her to say it.

“I, uh, I don’t really want to be in a relationship with someone that I can’t, you know, be intimate with.” Her face is in full-on flames now and I stifle a laugh. I am less successful at stifling the other reactions my body is having to this conversation.

“Bella, I don’t know how it works with a vampire and a human.” She nods at me, wide-eyed. “But I think that, if you’re willing to do a little research, we can figure it out.” I may not be the smoothest undead creature in the world, but I can tell I got to her with that. I can hear her pulse speed up and her eyes get a little distant.

“You know, when you’re less mad at me and all,” I say, nonchalantly. She blinks at me and then smiles.

“You know, this was a pretty awful first date.” She takes another step towards me.

“Yeah, I’ve never done this before, and Alice didn’t warn me about my attack of hideous honesty.” I run my fingers through my hair and stand up. I should probably walk her back to her/my door or something.

“Bad first dates really should not end in a kiss.” She is still smiling at me, and she moves closer. She is doing that thing that she does when she’s trying to flirt. It’s pretty cute, but seems misplaced right now.

“Oh, God, no. I should actually get slapped or something, but I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“Still, I think we should try. You know, for research purposes.” I suddenly realize what she’s saying, as improbable as it is. She wants me to kiss her. I’m not even thinking about saying no.

She steps to within arm’s reach and I put my hands on her shoulders to gently pull her closer. She’s standing in front of me with her face tilted up, and I think that maybe I should have done a little more research before this particular bit of research so I don’t mess this up. But there’s no time and I’m going to have to wing it.

“Hold still, OK?” I don’t think I’m going to have any trouble with the smell of her blood, but I figure this will be easier if I’m not trying to hit a moving target. She nods and waits for me to move.

I take her chin in my hand and lean down and slowly, slower than I’ve ever moved, press my lips against hers. She’s so soft and warm and after a few seconds she moves her lips slightly against mine and if I could die I would think I had and gone someplace way cooler than heaven, because, you know, harps and white robes are totally not my thing.

Way too soon, I feel her pull away slightly and I stand up (yeah, uh, nevermind) and look at her face. She has a thoughtful smile.

“You know, Edward, I think this might work out fine,” she says to me with a wink, and she turns to go back into the house.


	19. The Third Man

The Third Man

I am relaxing in my office, wondering if Bella would be interested in watching “Double Indemnity” with me that night when, horrifyingly, I find myself staring at Rose’s pointing, accusatory finger.

I jump up so quickly that my rolling chair goes flying towards the wall. It bounces off of said wall, denting it, and shoots off at an angle. It actually makes me think that Emmett, Jasper and I could play a gigantic game of pool with cars and an abandoned warehouse. I don’t have much of a chance to enjoy my brilliant new idea before Rose’s finger pokes me in the nose. Hard.

“What are you going to do about it, Edward?” She is in full-on fury mode. I have no idea what I did to get her this mad, but I haven’t seen her this mad (at anyone who wasn’t Emmett) since Jasper had that freak-out in New Hampshire in 1988. We had just moved there, and Rose had this huge closet, and she was furious about having to leave. Like it’s a good idea for a vampire to go to a hockey game.

“About what?” Rose’s head fills with images of Thomas. Are you just going to let someone take him away? I honestly don’t know if Rose’s yelling is worse out loud or in my head, but both are unpleasant. I am filled with apprehension, both from Rose’s anger and the thought that someone would take Thomas away.

“Who’s going to take Thomas away?” Someone’s going to try to take Thomas away from a bunch of vampires? Really?

“What if his…biological father decides he wants to be a part of his life? They have rights, you know. What are we going to do then?” Rosalie has a good point. My initial impulse is to track him down and kill him, but I’m pretty sure that would upset Bella. Plus, it’s morally wrong. Which I am perfectly willing to disregard if it wasn’t also going to make Bella upset.

“Well, clearly we have to do something, but I don’t really want to plan anything without Bella being involved.” Rosalie looks at me with such disdain that I’m tempted to look in the mirror to see if I’ve suddenly turned into Emmett or something.

“If we’re going to do something…permanent, I don’t think we should involve her.” Rose looks at me pointedly. She has images of us pushing a faceless, generic teenage boy off of a cliff.

“Well, I’m trying this new thing where I tell Bella the truth about stuff so that she actually trusts me.”

“Why?” Rose totally doesn’t get it. I ask her, “Don’t you tell Emmett the truth about stuff?”

She snorts at me. “You’re kidding, right? Emmett and I have been together for, what, seventy-five years? Do you really think that’s because I tell him the truth when he asks me if I think he’s smart, or if I ever think about other guys, or if I think that his poetry is good?”

“Emmett writes poetry?” This I have to see. Rose shakes her head.

“Yeah, mostly limericks. Although he did go through a little haiku phase when they made that Mishima book into a movie. You know, the one where the kids attack the guy? Remember he went through that Japanese phase?”

“Oh, yeah. I was trying to block it. That whole sumo wrestling thing was just a little disturbing.” Rose nods.

“Tell me. If I wanted to be married to a guy in a diaper, I wouldn’t have had Carlisle change him, you know?”

“Rose, he was dying.”

“I don’t know. You know how he exaggerates. Maybe a couple of bandages and a tourniquet and he would have been ok.”

Just then Jasper comes in. “Did you ask him?” he asks Rose. She nods.

“Well, what do you think we should do?” Jasper asks me. What got everyone all worried about this today of all days I don’t know. Like there was a “baby repo man” driving through the neighborhood or something.

“Jasper, do you tell Alice the truth about everything?” Rose asks.

“Don’t have to. She already knows. Anyway, I think we should get a lawyer,” he says. “Someone in family law who can help us figure out what rights the sperm donor has and how to take them away. If we can’t do that, then we kill him.”

“I’ve been to law school,” Rose says with a pout.

“Yeah, so has Emmett. Kind of takes the wind out of your sails, doesn’t it? Anyway, you haven’t taken the bar exam in Washington and I don’t want to screw this up by having dubious legal representation.” Rose nods, agreeing reluctantly. “I’ll call Bella and see if it’s ok for us to make an appointment with a lawyer.”

Esme answers the phone when I call home and she goes to get Bella.

“What’s up, Edward?” she says, slightly breathless. Which would be hot, except that it’s probably just from coming in from the back yard.

“Hi, Sweetie, how are you?” Rose rolls her eyes at me while Jasper smirks. I don’t care. Seriously.

“I’m good. Did you need something? I was just about to teach Emmett how to change diapers.”

“Yeah, um, I was hoping that it would be ok with you if we set up a meeting with a family lawyer. You know, to deal with any potential issues that might come up around paternity?” There’s a moment of silence and suddenly I’m totally feeling Rosalie’s advice about honesty. Never a good idea. And then she speaks.

“Yeah, that would be a good idea. I actually know a good lawyer I can call. I’ll see if he can come to the house so everyone can be there, ok?”

“Yeah, that sounds good.” I get off the phone and usher Rose and Jasper out of the office before writhing around in jealousy for a few minutes. Totally unreasonable, I know, but I am irked. If Bella has to know a lawyer I would much rather it be a nice woman.

I manage to give myself the “it’s totally not a big deal” talk before I get home, which is a good thing because apparently Bella’s attorney friend has an incredibly open schedule and will be coming by tonight. The cousins are on a trip to Vegas for the Adult Entertainment Awards or they could be a useful distraction for her “friend.”

“Bella, honey, your friend eats food, right?” Esme asks from the kitchen.

“Yeah, Esme. Are you going to make something?” Esme nods, pulling some vegetables out of the refrigerator. Esme’s getting pretty good at the whole human food thing. Bella helps her while I hold Thomas. I get him out of earshot of Bella so I can say “daddy” to him repeatedly while pointing to myself.

All I’m really getting out of him are giggles, though, and I’m hoping he eats something besides boob soon so I can start bribing him; or reinforcing desired behaviors, if you prefer. I hear a car pulling up in front of the house.

I look out the living room window and am struck by this overwhelming sense of deja-vu when I realize that not only is Bella’s mechanic a wolf, but so is her lawyer.

Actually, I don’t think he’s an actual, transforming, furry, clothing-destroying wolf, but he’s definitely Quileute. He is probably too old to have gotten caught in the genetic lottery; he looks like he’s in his late 20’s. He’s wearing a pinstriped suit and sunglasses. He pulls a briefcase out of his Lexus convertible and looks around the outside of the house with a slight smirk.

“Bella, your shyster is here!” Emmett comes thundering down the stairs wearing a suit and wingtips. I guess Emmett’s decided to trot out his lawyer costume.

There’s a knock at the door and Rose walks over to answer it. She sees him and says, “You’re kidding me, right?”

Bella’s friend smirks at her and then pokes his head in and looks around. He sniffs the room and winces.

“Jesus, it smells like someone boiled a Strawberry Shortcake doll in corn syrup in here!” Bella comes in from the kitchen and smiles at him.

“Quil! Thanks for coming out. I’m so glad you agreed to help us!” She gives him a hug and I only keep myself from growling by reminding myself that I’m holding Thomas and I don’t want to frighten him. Bella pulls away from him and faces the rest of us.

“This is Quil Ateara. He’s a family lawyer in Seattle, but he was nice enough to come out to meet with us.” She starts introducing him around the room and we try to be gracious. To his credit, he knows that we aren’t thrilled, but he is polite as introductions are made. She introduces me last.

“Quil, this is Edward.” Quil smiles at me. “The boyfriend, huh?” I am momentarily taken aback, but I give him a nod as I extend my hand as much as I can and still keep from jostling Thomas. He takes my hand and shakes it.

“This must be the cause of all this fuss,” Quil says, gesturing to Thomas with a smile.

“That’s Thomas. Do you want to hold him?” Quil gets a look of fake horror on his face and waves his hands helplessly. “Oh, God, no. Never touch the stuff.” He looks around and gestures to the couches in the living room. “Shall we get started?” Esme gets him seated and goes off to get him a drink. We all take seats. I pull Bella down next to me, and she takes Thomas from me with a smile.

“So, if I understand correctly, we are meeting to determine what rights Thomas’s biological father has?” He pulls out a yellow legal pad and a pen and looks around at the collected faces in the room.

“I think that our major concern is that Thomas stay with us. I don’t want to deny anyone their parental rights, but I don’t think that…” Esme’s voices drift off as she imagines us having to share him.

“Well, frankly, Esme, I think we should be thinking in terms of denying people their parental rights. I mean, first off, you guys have money. What if this guy…” his voice trails off as he gestures to Bella for the name. She pauses before saying, “Tyler” quietly. He continues, “What if this guy Tyler sees the kind of money you guys obviously have, and decides to sue for custody just to get his hands on some? Even worse, what if he decides to sue for visitation and he spends enough time around you guys to pick up on the freak-factor? It’s a bad idea all around and, I’m sorry, Bella, but the smartest thing to do is eliminate any possibility of that right away.”

My family is silent for a minute and then I say, “Well, I agree. Is that alright with you, Bella?” I look at Bella.

“Well, wait until I finish,” Quil says. “The other issue here is that you don’t want to just snuff this guy or cut him off completely. What if, God forbid, Thomas were to need a kidney or some bone-marrow? What if Bella wants Thomas to be able to seek out his father when he’s older? I think what we need to do here is get the sucker to sign a binding agreement that says he relinquishes his custodial rights, but will make himself available in the case of one of these scenarios. Does that sound acceptable?”

I think I love this guy. If I had suggested snuffing “Tyler”, Bella would have been furious. But you get a legal professional - using the term “professional” loosely, of course - saying the same thing, and she actually looks convinced.

“It sound right, but how are you going to get him to agree to this?” Bella speaks cautiously. Quil smiles at her.

“Well, as your legal counsel, I am going to suggest a two-part approach. First, you scare the shit out of him in some creepy vampire way, and then you give him a ton of money. I don’t know this clown, but I’m going to wager that it’ll work.”

Alice breaks the second stunned silence with laughter. She nods at us, and then gets up and walks over to Quil. She holds out her hand.

“Let me take your coat, Quil. You’ve got a contract to write.” He grins at her and slips out of his sport coat. “Emmett?” he says. “You look like a discriminating professional. You got a laptop or something I could use?” Emmett jumps up and goes to get his computer. “Esme, Dollface, can I get another scotch?” He holds up his glass for Esme and she happily obliges him.

Bella looks at me. “I guess that means it works?” She has a slight frown on her face. I reach out and smooth out her frown gently. “Yeah, Alice saw it working. We’re going to Arizona.”

“So, Bella, this guy is a…satyr, an orc, maybe a leprechaun?” Bella laughs. “No, just a human teenager.” Quil makes a note and looks up at her again, “Is he listed on the birth certificate?” She blushes and shakes her head. “No, I left it blank. He can still prove paternity through a test though, right?”

Quil nods his head. “I’m going to suggest that you amend the birth certificate to list tall, white and thirsty here as the dad. I mean, if that’s amenable to you, Edward?”

I nod carefully, trying not to get up and kiss this guy. I couldn’t have scripted this better if I had tried. I look at Bella, trying to see if she’s ok with the idea. She looks wary, but she nods as well.

“Great. I can see the resemblance, now that you mention it. I mean, you both only drink fluids, right?” Quil winks at me. Just then Emmett comes downstairs with his computer.

“Hey, Quil, what’s the difference between a lawyer and a catfish?” Quil smiles at Emmett. Great, Emmett’s started on his lawyer jokes.  
“One is a slimy, bottom-dwelling, scum-sucker. The other’s a fish.” Emmett laughs at his own joke and, surprisingly, so does Quil.

“Emmett, what do lawyers use for birth control?” Quil asks him.  
Emmett yells, “Their personalities!” The two of them are howling with laughter.

Quil wipes the tears out of his eyes and says, “Ok, one more. These two attorneys are walking out of a bar and a beautiful woman walks by. One attorney turns to his associate and says ‘Boy, I would like to screw her.’ The other attorney thinks for a second and then he says, ‘Out of what?’” Quils eyes get wide as he remembers that Bella’s in the room. “Oh shit, I mean, shoot, Bella, I’m sorry!”

Bella laughs and waves a hand. “It’s ok, Quil. I’m glad you like each other so much.”

Quil smiles wryly and says, “Yeah, don’t tell Uncle Billy. I mean, he knows I’m doing this, but he was just all about protecting your rights. I don’t think these guys are going to take advantage of you, even if they are, you know.” He waves his hand at Emmett and I.

“Fuck-awesome?” Emmett says with a smile. Quil laughs. “Yeah, that and, dead and stuff.”

Quil and Emmett get to work and Rosalie comes down to join them. I follow Bella upstairs to put Thomas down. He’s spit up on her sweater and she’s trying to clean up. I watch her ministrations for a minute quietly. 

Finally, she looks at me somewhat warily. “Should I even ask what you guys are going to do?” I smile at her and put my hands on her upper arms.

“Bella, I will tell you the truth if you really want to know. But I don’t think that you do.” She rolls her eyes.

“I should just trust you, huh?” I nod.

She smiles at me sweetly. “I trust you.”

Well, it’s not the three words I’d most like to hear but it’ll do for now.

 

a/n: Since I know everyone’s dying to see it, here’s one of Emmett’s limericks:

“There once was a woman named Rose,

Who saved me from death I suppose.

That bear left me for dead,

Carlisle bit me instead.

She’s hot when she takes off her clothes.”


	20. Stranger in Town

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Betham betas it so you don't have to.

Stranger in Town

Going to Arizona in the summer is not exactly an easy thing for a group of vampires to do. But then, traveling with infants is hardly a piece of cake, so I try to keep the whining to a minimum.

It was actually Bella’s idea to come with us. She explained that either Renee would come here to visit, or Bella could visit her in Phoenix - and the nice thing about being the visitor as opposed to the visitee is that you could decide when to leave. I conceded to her superior wisdom, and I wanted her and Thomas to come with me anyway, so it was win-win.

So Bella, Thomas and I flew with Quil, Rosalie and Emmett down to Phoenix, which took some maneuvering to avoid the sun - including a chartered flight, timed carefully for both the sun and Thomas’s sleep schedule - and some big-time tips for housekeeping at the hotel so that they didn’t decide to pop in during the day and catch me sparkling next to the window.

Alice had given us enough information from her vision to know where we could find Tyler, but we thought it best to do a little information gathering anyway. Good thing we had a private detective in the family, huh?

It’s funny that we have Bella’s ex-boyfriend all built up to be this ultra-bad guy or mythological figure when really he’s just a guy. Tyler Crowley is a 19 year-old Phoenix native with divorced parents and a Nissan Sentra. He is registered to attend Arizona State in the fall and currently works at one of those places that sell nothing but baseball caps. Who knew one of those places would get that much business? American males are not known for accessorizing creatively. Not that I don’t enjoy my Cub's hat. But I usually wear it just to hide my glitter-scalp.

His DMV photo shows him to be completely ordinary. An average guy: dark brown hair, dazed DMV smile, 6’2, which means he’s probably 6’, right? OK grades in high school, one parking ticket and one moving violation (45 in a 30 zone) and pretty mainstream taste in music, if his iTunes purchases are any indication. His Facebook page shows that he had what looks like two and a half girlfriends in his senior year, but none of them were Bella. Interesting. Of course, not having to look at pictures of him with his tongue down Bella’s throat means that he may survive my trip to Phoenix.

Of course, I get to do all this research in the comfort of my hotel room while poor Bella has to drive over to Renee’s place in the Arizona heat to visit her. Poor thing. Unfortunately, Alice saw that if we invited her over here to visit, she would eventually wonder why we had the shades drawn all day. Not that she’d guess that we’re vampires. Her suspicions would go more to drug dealers or porn producers.

It’s just getting dark when Bella gets back. She looks miserable, sweaty, tired, and hot. And not in the good way.

“Tell me why people live in the desert?” she asks, wiping her brow and dropping the enormous bag she has to carry around in order to care for Thomas. Seriously, it makes no sense to me that she needs a bag that weighs three times more than he does.

“Because they’re morons,” I answer, thanking Alice silently for calling an hour ago and telling me to turn up the A/C.

“It feels great in here.” I nod and take Thomas from her. She looks at me for the first time. “What are you wearing?” I look down at the Alice-approved outfit. I have a dark striped shirt and black jeans on. She also insisted I use hair gel and then Skype her while she told me how to style it.

“Alice’s doing,” I say, gesturing to the clothes and the hair. “It’s to ambush Tyler.” She nods slowly at me. I am trying to see if it’s awkward for her when I mention him, but she’s not giving anything away. Typical.

“You look…nice,” she says. I raise an eyebrow at her as I walk into her room to find soap for Thomas. “Nice?” I say over my shoulder. Bella follows me into the bedroom.

“Yeah, uh, you look good when you brush your hair,” she says with a grin, as she spreads a towel out on the bathroom counter and fills up the sink.

“Why don’t you take it easy and I’ll bathe Thomas?” She looks surprised but she nods.

“Actually, I’m going to take a shower,” she says. Dear God, why did I get the suite with two bathrooms?

“Sure,” I nod, hoping I’m hiding my disappointment when she goes to the other bathroom. Because I know I’m a pervert but she doesn’t need to know that.

I get Thomas bathed and in his jammies and take him back out to the living room. I locate a bottle in the refrigerator, get creeped out for about the 25th time about breast milk, which is totally hypocritical if you think about what I eat, and settle in with Thomas.

“Did you see crazy grandma today, Buddy?” I ask while he eats. “Do you miss vampire grandma?” I am cooing at him when Bella comes out of the bathroom wearing the best argument for living in this city I have ever seen, a pair of what look like blue boxer shorts and a tank top. Less clothing than I have ever seen her in, just in case anyone who isn’t me is measuring.

She curls up on the couch next to us. I hope she doesn’t catch me ogling. Too much. Then I decide that some ogling on my part might be flattering to her.

“I don’t really want to know what you guys are up to tonight, do I?” she asks, smiling at Thomas as he eats.

“Nope, you are totally going to be happier not thinking about what’s going to happen,” I reassure her.

“It’s just that you look like you’re going out clubbing or something,” she gestures to my outfit.

“Yeah, that’s where Alice saw us finding him.” I like the anonymity of ‘him.” It’ll make the process of depersonalizing him so much easier, just in case I have to snuff him.

“Oh.” Bella looks away for a second and then back at me. “You are doing such a good job with Thomas. Are you sure you don’t mind the whole birth certificate thing?”

“Not at all. You know how I feel about Thomas.”

“It’s just weird that you’ll be listed as his dad when we’ve never even…you know.” Bella waves a hand in between the two of us, which I guess is the universal gesture for “getting it on.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of like a virgin birth but the other way around.”

Crickets.

You ever think of something really funny to say and then you say it and then realize that it would be really funny if it weren’t so fucking embarrassing to you?

Yeah, I have. Just now, as a matter of fact.

“You’re kidding,” she says, staring at me. I stare back, frozen, until I hear the wet gurgle of Thomas finishing his bottle. Which reminds me again that Thomas has had more action than I have.

“Oh, look, I need to burp him,” I say gleefully, as if this were the high point of my century on Earth. I stand up and pat Thomas on the back as if it requires all of my attention.

And then Thomas is saved from being burped to death by Emmett knocking on the door to let me know it was time to go. I give Bella a quick, quasi-apologetic smile and hand Thomas to her.

“See you later. I’ve got ex-boyfriends to stalk.” I give Bella a wave and get out the door as fast as I can.

Alice did a pretty good job of finding the club we’ll stalk Tyler in but she had a hard time pinning down a time, so we have to hang out a bit longer than I want to. And, in reality, five minutes is really longer than I want to hang out in a club. But Emmett and Quil are having a good time; Emmett by beating frat boys at darts and Quil by collecting his winnings.

I am sitting at the bar keeping an eye out for the sperm donor, keeping the seat next to me open by glaring at anyone who comes by. The mental content of this place is pretty annoying, but at least it’s consistent. In the hour we are there, seven women and three men come by to try to talk to me. I politely turn them away.

Finally, Tyler Crowley shows up and, as Alice saw, he takes the empty seat next to me and orders a coke. He turns back around in his seat and looks at the crowd. I catch his eye.

“How’s it going?’ I say, raising my “drink.” Again, I am stunned by his ordinariness; he is…so average, both in appearance and thought, that I am shocked that he dare approach my sublime Bella. 

“It’s alright. You?” he says, eyeing me. He wonders if sitting next to me is a good idea, whether he will appear unattractive next to someone so handsome, and then decides that he might be able to catch the attention of women that I turn down. And then he is embarrassed for thinking I’m handsome.

Then, right on cue, a young blonde with like half of a skirt on walks up to us and asks me to dance.

“No, thank you. I am completely disinterested,” I answer, and she makes a huffing noise and rolls her eyes as she walks away.

“What was that, dude?” Tyler looks at me in amazement. “She was really hot!”

“I already have a girl. Would you like to see a picture of her?” I give him my widest smile. Tyler is thinking there’s something wrong with me, but he humors me.

I pull out my wallet and take out the picture of Bella and Thomas that we took before we left Forks. I place it on the bar.

“That’s my girl and our baby,” I say with evident pride. Tyler looks at the picture diffidently and then does a double take. I can hear the confusion in his head as he recognizes Bella. He looks back at me with fear in his eyes. Emmett has made his way over to us and stands on the other side of him.

“Do you like blood, Tyler?” I ask, as he notices the gigantic man on his right, also grinning like a crazy person. He turns back to me.

“What?” he says. His thoughts are getting a little desperate and he’s wondering why no one else has noticed how weird we are.

I continue talking, keeping my tone light. “Because that little boy isn’t my blood, but if anyone tried to take him away…Well, I’d be furious. I frankly don’t know what I’d do. Something crazy, probably.” Tyler is staring at me. He’s put it together now that Bella had the baby, and that she then apparently took up with some kind of well-dressed Charles Manson. Crazy vampire smile wins again! Emmett and I did spend some time practicing at home.

“We good, Tyler?” I ask, picking up my picture and slipping it back into my wallet. He nods slowly. I take another card out of my wallet and throw it on the counter. It had the address for the hotel and the conference room number where Quil and Rose will meet with him. “Tomorrow at noon. Don’t be late.” He nods again as Emmett gives him a pat on the back and we walk away. There is no way he’s not going to show up for that meeting, where Quil and Rosalie will have him sign an exquisitely crafted document they’ve been working on for two days. You know, the one that makes it so he has no rights and plenty of obligation? And they say we’re the monsters.

I slip back into the suite quietly so as not to wake the human but about a minute later she comes out, rubbing her eyes, still wearing her “look Edward, I’m not wearing a lot of material” pajamas. Me and my eyes try to keep it respectful.

“Why are you up, Bella? It’s almost one am.”

She looks at me earnestly. “I wanted to talk about what you said earlier. About never having…you know.” Great. I was hoping she would have forgot. Humans forget shit, right?

“We don’t have to,” I say, flopping down on the couch. She comes over and curls her body up about a foot away from me.

“No, I want to. I don’t want you to be embarrassed about it. I was just surprised. I mean, a hundred years is a long time.” Yeah, you tell me, Bella.

“It wasn’t, really. I just didn’t have any interest in…you know.” She frowns slightly.

“Edward, I like you. You know I do. I just don’t think I could be in a relationship that didn’t have any…intimacy. If you’re not interested in that with me, I don’t…” I cut her off before she can say any more blasphemy.

“You think I don’t want to have sex with you? Are you kidding?” I didn’t mean it to come out like that, but she blushes and the color drifts all the way down to her, well, you know.

“I’m sorry, Bella. I didn’t mean for it to come out like that. I should have said “make love” or something more respectful. But, yeah, I want to do that with you. And a bunch of other stuff. I just never have before because I didn’t have anyone that I wanted to do that stuff with.”

She reaches out and takes my hand. Ah, Bella’s hand. I remember our brief love affair in the OB/GYN’s office. I have slightly higher ambitions now, but it’s totally better than not touching Bella at all.

“Edward, I think it’s really sweet and incredibly…” she looks down and blushes even redder, “…just really hot that I’m the only person you’ve ever wanted. Is that wrong?” She looks back at me, embarrassed. “I mean, I wouldn’t have wanted you to be lonely all those years, but I’m really flattered that you waited for me. Does that make sense?”

I nod slowly. I have no words, only urges that seem like really bad or potentially awesome ideas right now.

“I would wish that I had waited for you, but then we wouldn’t have Thomas. If I hadn’t had sex with some dumbass who can’t use a condom right we never would have met, so I can’t really regret that, right?” I nod. The more she talks about our potential sex life the more I think it’s a really good idea to either get the fuck out of here or beg her to fool around with me. I just can’t seem to get the words together for an appropriate advisory warning in case she doesn’t want to get jumped on at one o’clock in the morning.

“You should probably…” I manage to get some combination of words out, but she shifts closer to me. Which shuts me up again.

“Hold still,” she says. “I want to try something.” I am a statue. I am those steel and cement things that they use to stabilize bridges. Big-ass bridges, not some flimsy wooden shit.

She moves closer to me and presses her mouth to mine. She then takes the hand she was holding and places it on the back of her neck. She presses her lips against mine again and moves them slowly. And then she lets out this tiny, glorious moan.

“God, I love how cold you are,” she says and, totally in defiance of any orders she may have given, my other hand comes over to her waist and pulls her into my lap.

She sighs and pushes her hands into my hair as she kisses me. The rebellious hands are under control for now and manage to stay wrapped around her neck and waist, respectively, but they are thinking about mutiny. The Army Corp of Engineers would be embarrassed by my inability to stay still, and I’m mixing my metaphors and I don’t care.

It’s sublime, having her in my arms like this, and I think about moving to the desert if it means that she will appreciate my coldness all that much more, when I become aware that the hand that was stationed on the back of her neck is making his way around to the front and she is wiggling in an attempt to get closer.

And then, like the voice of reason in a diaper and Arizona Diamondbacks pajamas, Thomas wakes up.

She groans and places one last kiss on my face and smiles gloriously at me.

“Sorry,” she says, getting up and walking into the bedroom.

I follow and stop her for a moment. “Don’t be sorry. We have nothing but time.”

She grins at me sleepily and I’m leaving to let her feed him when it occurs to me what we need to talk about next. There is no way that I want to ever let them go. Not now, not in 60 or 70 years. And I don’t know how she feels about becoming like me.

Inter-species dating is a bitch, huh?


	21. To Have and Have Not

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: Thank you to Betham for betaing the bejesus out of this one.

To Have and Have Not

I don’t generally go around with a profound sense of self-satisfaction. There’s lots of our kind who feel like the top of the food chain and all-around winners most of the time. I’m not really like that. But this morning, I am the finest tiger in the jungle. I got this whole thing nailed.

I totally had a make-out session with Bella.

I am as close to paternal-rights monopoly as I can get without actually spawning Thomas.

I am way better at changing diapers than Emmett.

I’m so good at the whole baby-maintenance thing that when Bella wakes up I tell her that I’ll watch Thomas while she goes and signs the papers. I am hoping that she can get in there early enough to sign them without having to see Tyler.

Thomas and I are kickin’ it with some jazz and some John D. McDonald - I figure the Travis McGee books will help him learn his colors – when I get a text from Quil.

YOU MIGHT WANT TO GET DOWN HERE, SPORT. YOUR GIRL IS REFUSING TO SIGN.

I stare at my phone for a minute, waiting for the message to change into something else or for Quil to send one saying he was just fucking with me, because fucking with vampires is a cool thing that it seems like he’d be into doing.

Nothing happens, so I close my book and Thomas and I take the elevator down to the second floor conference rooms. Why in the world would Bella refuse to sign? It makes me anxious; I wonder if she has suddenly changed her mind about us.

I can hear the thought-fuckery tornado going on in the conference room from all the way the way down the hallway, and I mumble to Thomas about what a lucky dude he is that he won’t be expected to participate in the cluster-fuck in conference room #203. He makes a gurgly-spitty noise at me. I decide to think of it as kind of a drooly pep-talk.

I open the door to see the following: Bella sitting in the center of the room, looking at the ground, looking like she’s close to tears. Tyler sitting in a chair he has pushed into a corner to get as far from Emmett as he can. Emmett grinning at Tyler from across the room. Quil leaning down next to Bella, trying to talk to her. Rose glaring at the two of them and Kevin, the lawyer hired to make sure we were compliant with Arizona law, looking around the room as if the circus has come to town.

As soon as they see me, Tyler pulls even farther into the corner. If he recedes any further he’s going to look like wallpaper. Rose jumps up and says, “Edward, I’ve never been so happy to see you,” and Bella looks at me with her eyes filled with tears and says, “Oh, Edward. I’m so sorry.”

That’s bad. That’s very bad.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. Rosalie makes a loud “tsking” noise and Quil pats Bella on the shoulder.

“It’s OK, Buttercup. We can fix it.” Bella gets up and walks over to Thomas and I. She puts her hand on his head and strokes it.

“What’s going on, Bella?” I ask again, raising my eyebrows at her. Which has NO impact on her because she’s not looking at me. On purpose. Bad things.

“Bella,” I say in that sing-songy, annoying voice that Alice uses with me all the time. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”

She finally looks at me apologetically, biting her lower lip and wincing. “That’s just it, Edward. I should have been paying more attention. I have been letting you guys do all the work and, just…hiding from reality, you know?” I have a very bad feeling I’m about to get dumped in front of half a dozen people. I don’t know if you’ve ever had that happen to you and since I’ve never actually had a girlfriend it’s never happened to me, but it seems like it’d be unpleasant.

“Let’s go talk about this somewhere more private,” I suggest, pulling on her elbow and going for the door.

“But what about...” Bella gestures back to the room.

“Well, the lawyers are getting paid by the hour and Emmett and Rosalie aren’t exactly running out of time. And, frankly, I don’t care about him.” I gesture to Tyler, who winces when I look at him. I think he thought if he held still I’d think he was a statue. A freakin’ teenage boy statue. Except that he’s sweating bullets right now.

Bella follows me into the hallway and down a few doors to at least give us a little bit of privacy. At the end of the hall I stop and – still holding Thomas – look at her expectantly. She wrings her hands a little before taking a deep breath and starting to talk.

“It’s just that, I’ve been letting you guys take care of everything and that’s not right. I mean, I’m a mother, for Christ’s sake, and I have been acting like a child.” She sighs and continues, “I spent my whole pregnancy pretending Thomas didn’t have a dad and misleading my dad and now I let you guys handle this whole custody issue. I let you guys spend all this time working on the agreement and I could have prevented this whole mess. I just wanted to pretend that he was yours.” She looks at the ground, clearly embarrassed.

She looks like she’s going to cry again and I am really at a maturity impasse here. I mean, on one hand, if she’s thinking about breaking up with me and going to play house with the actual biological father of the baby I’ve come to think of as my own, fuck yeah, I want her to be crying right now. I want her to be feeling so upset about this that she cries herself silly and decides that it’s the wrong idea because she’s wallowing in abject misery.

On the other hand, I love her and I don’t want her to be upset. At all. Even if she has decided she wants to be with that mediocre 19 year-old human whose only advantage over me is viable sperm.

My long-awaited emotional maturity could have picked a better time to show up. The impulse to act like a grown-up is seriously fucking with my future happiness right now.

“What do we need to do to make this right, Bella?” I feel every single one of my 110 years when I say this. She bites her lip as she thinks.

“I think I need to talk to Tyler. Privately.” She waits for my reaction. I nod and rub Thomas’s head for comfort. My own, that is.

“Why don’t you hold onto him,” she says, gesturing at Thomas. “Tyler and I can go downstairs for lunch or something.” I nod again, glad that I will at least get to hold onto “my” baby for a little longer.

“I’m going back up to the room then. Let me know when you get it figured out.” I am a sad, sad vampire. If I had a cape it would be dragging on the ground.

I mope in the room. Thomas and I have a conversation (which I monopolize) about how I am a way better choice for his mom than his so-called “dad”. I listen to some jazz. I heat up some breast milk. I feel guilty about thinking it’s gross and swear if I have the chance to continue to take care of Thomas that I won’t think it’s gross ever again. I even get a little nostalgic about changing diapers. Thomas falls asleep and I’m just starting to consider doing something creepy like smelling Bella’s clothes when she comes in.

She gives me a small, apologetic smile and sits down on the couch. I pretend that I’m really busy with my iPhone. Really, I’m just playing Angry Birds and being passive-aggressive.

After a few minutes she speaks softly: “Edward? Do you want to hear what we decided? Or do you want to wait until we sign the papers? Rose said they’ll be ready tomorrow.” I don’t answer for a second. 

“Well, what did you two decide?” I finally ask. I mean, I don’t want to be rude.

“Well, I got Tyler to agree to visits twice a year, which was really two visits more than he was interested in.” I turn to her, surprised. She’s rolling her eyes.

“I figured I could bring Thomas down or we could have Tyler drag his lazy ass up to Seattle if you wanted to be there, too. Arizona’s not exactly an ideal vacation spot for you.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask. She looks at me with a slight frown.

“I guess, if you don’t want to be there…I guess I just assumed that you would want to be…” She suddenly looks very unsure. “Edward, if you’ve changed your mind…”

“No, you changed your mind. You said you made a mistake.” I put my phone down and walk over to where she’s sitting on the couch.

“I changed my mind?” She shakes her head. “Edward, I think that I wasn’t clear. I think that Thomas deserves to know his biological father, even if he has you helping me take care of him. I had them put visitation in the agreement.” She shakes her head again. “Tyler wasn’t enthusiastic about it but he just found out he’s a dad yesterday, so I guess I shouldn’t judge too harshly.”

I sat down on the couch next to her. “What else did you change?” I’m trying to stay nonchalant but I am beginning to realize that Bella wouldn’t need a visitation agreement if she was going to stay here with him.

She snorts. “Well, I took out the part where he gets that ridiculous amount of money.” She shakes her head at me in disgust. “I’m really sorry about all the extra work. I really should have been more mature about the whole thing.”

“So, you’re not thinking of trying to make things work with him?” She freezes for a second and then a look of horror spreads across her face.

“You thought that I wanted to be with him instead of you? Really?” She stares at me with disbelief. I nod.

“Where did you get that idea?” She is genuinely curious and I really have to come up with a better answer than, “Because I’m insecure and apparently really bad at understanding people whose minds I can’t read.”

“Well, you were crying and apologizing to me and I, um, I just don’t really know.” Bella is looking at me with what looks like pity and utter disbelief at my stupidity. She scoots closer to me and strokes the hair on the back of my head.

“I don’t want to sound shallow, but you really thought I’d chose some, I’m sorry, but some really ordinary guy like Tyler over you? Have you looked at yourself in the mirror recently? And not only are you, well, pretty, but you have this amazing family. You’re smart and funny and you love me more than anyone else ever will. I mean, you waited ninety frickin’ years for me. That’s romantic as fuck.” She’s snuggled up to me on the couch and is now stroking my chest, too. I’m thinking that I might arrange to have attacks of debilitating insecurity a lot more from now on. The consequences certainly seem worth the hour or so of heartache.

“Do you know why I went out with Tyler in the first place?” she asks me. I shake my head. “Before my mom met Phil, I was always kind of the parent. I made sure dinner was ready, made sure she knew where her keys were, stuff like that. Then she met Phil and I felt like she had someone else taking care of her. I felt like I could finally be a teenager, before it was too late. I went to a dance for the first time. I went to a couple parties. Tyler was the first guy to ask me out, so I went out with him. Honestly, it could have been anyone.”

“Edward, “ she looks into my eyes earnestly. “Honestly, the only thing he’s got on you is a pulse. And really, your deadness is not a big deal-breaker for me. You have other…selling points.” She smiles at me. I reach out and stroke her cheek.

“What time did you put Thomas down?” she says to me, her voice quieter.

“About twenty minutes ago,” I answer, confused by her question. She smiles at me

“I think I got interrupted last night,” she purrs to me as she climbs into my lap. She wraps her arms around my shoulders and places a kiss on the corner of my mouth. I pull her closer and kiss her, thinking I’m going to have to let my horrific lack of confidence hang out more often.

My phone buzzes and she pulls back slightly. “Ignore it,” I say into her neck, pulling her back to me. Then my phone rings, and I grip her a little tighter so she won’t pull away as I bury my face in the hair behind her ear.

“What if it’s an emergency?” she murmurs breathily.

“If the fucking hotel burns down I’ll carry you guys out, OK?” I move her hair aside to put my lips on her neck again. If this isn’t an emergency, I don’t know what is.

Then her phone rings. She pulls away with a groan and climbs out of my lap to find her phone.

“If that’s not like the Pope or something, I’m going to kill them,” I say, burying my hands in my hair in frustration.

“Neither of us are Catholic,” she says, frowning as she picks up her phone.

‘Then he shouldn’t be calling us either.” She laughs and answers the phone.

“Hello?...Yeah, Alice, he’s right here.” She hands me the phone.

“Alice, this better be you telling me that the Apocalypse is nigh because you just interrupted…”

Alice cuts me off. “I know what I interrupted. Trust me, we all want you to get some action just as much as you do. But your future mother-in-law is making a surprise visit in seven minutes and you don’t really want to be caught in that…condition.”

I look down. Oh, that condition. “I don’t care.”

“Yeah, you do. Seriously, you need to convince Renee that you are not the kind of guy who just wants to dry-hump her daughter. Even if you are.”

“You know that’s not what’s going…well, it’s not all that going on here.” I take a deep breath. “Fine. Thank you, Alice.”

“You’re welcome, Edward. By the way, did you see that Angela Lansbury has two new movies out this year?”

“Thanks, Alice. Really.”

I hang up the phone and think about her role in “Nannie McPhee” until I’m presentable for the in-laws. The things we do for love, huh?

a/n: I have an Emmett haiku for you:

the growling brown bear  
hungry from hibernation  
good to eat, yum yum


	22. Pitching Woo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: Saint Betham of the righteous red pen betas it.

I wait for Renee to show up, thinking about Bella’s new, more assertive, personality. I think that it’s perfectly appropriate for her to advocate for herself and her child. It occurs to me that we were perhaps heavy-handed with regard to this whole “not letting her ex-boyfriend live” thing. In our defense, we are used to dealing with things in a very different way than humans. Most humans don’t have to move every ten years. Most of them don’t have to be as secretive as we have become accustomed to being. And most humans don’t have the kind of “throw money at it” attitude that we have developed, and that really seems to drive Bella crazy.  
So, we’ll have to get better at compromising. But in the short-term, I’m going to have to get better at skulking around in the corners of hotel rooms, because Bella’s mom is about to show up and there is a disturbing amount of sunlight in this room. I try to determine how much time I have before I will have to hide behind the couch to keep the sun off me. I calculate about an hour, and figure I’ll have to tell Bella that she needs to get her mom out of here before then.  
Bella comes back in from checking on Thomas and walks around the room closing the curtains.  
Oh. I guess I could have just done that.  
“We’ll tell my mom you have a headache, OK?” Bella smiles at me as I watch her, musing on how easy she just made that. Or how hard I made it. Whatever.  
There’s a knock on the door, and Bella turns to me and asks: “Ready?” before she opens it. I nod, and she opens the door to reveal her mom. Renee is wearing a pair of orange shorts and a pink shirt. I think I actually do have a headache, now that you mention it.  
Renee embraces Bella and then closes in on me, her mind fluttering with thoughts about how cute we are together. She hugs me and, thankfully, instead of thinking about how cold and inhuman I feel, she thinks I’m really muscular. Which I am, if by “muscular” you mean “made of cement”.  
Bella gets her mom seated and flops down on the couch facing her. I stand around awkwardly until Bella pats the couch next to her.  
“What’s up, Mom?” Bella asks. “Surprise visit? Don’t you think you should have done that before I got knocked up?” I wince at Bella’s words, but I realize that her mother is laughing.  
“I wanted to see this handsome boyfriend of yours,” Renee smiles at me and I can see the resemblance between her and her daughter for a moment.  
“I apologize for not coming to see you sooner, Mrs. Dwyer. I get terrible headaches and I’ve been cooped up in the hotel room.” Renee shakes her head at me.  
“Edward, call me Renee, please. It’s bad enough being a grandmother without being called ‘Mrs. Dwyer’, too. Or call me ‘Mom.’” Bella snorts at that and Renee shoots her a look.  
Bella and her mom sit and talk about Bella’s plans to go back to school and I listen, interjecting at appropriate moments. Renee’s mind is the most interesting sort of non-linear place. She seems to think in pictures and sometimes her pictures are a little surreal. It’s a little Fellini-esque (without the dwarves) and I am getting kind of disoriented. I figure that this must be what it’s like to do hallucinogenic drugs.  
Thomas rescues me before I can go too far down the rabbit-hole. He wakes up, and I offer to go get him. I bring him in and there’s a bit of an awkward moment when Bella sets herself up to nurse him discreetly. Some people might wonder why Bella was going to such towel-intensive lengths to hide her breasts from me, on the presumption that we were already at that stage of fooling around. These above-mentioned people would probably think it and then let it go because it’s such an embarrassing and completely inappropriate thing to ask out loud.  
These people are not Renee. She just blurted that shit out. Seriously.  
“Mom!” Bella said, glaring at her mom. I just looked at the floral arrangement. Interesting, them using tiger lilies and…  
“Edward.” Fuck, Renee was actually talking to me, and I had to answer some of her embarrassing-ass questions. “You’re not thinking of waiting until you get married, are you? Charlie said that you were kind of ‘old-fashioned’ and I hope that doesn’t mean you’re going to keep my baby girl waiting to…”  
“Actually,” I cut her off before she can finish that sentence the way she wanted to. “I’ve already asked Bella to marry me.” Bella jabs me in the ribs with her elbow and then winces. I look at her, and she glares at me and shakes her head.  
“Ix-nay on the arriage-may,” she murmurs. But it’s too late. Renee’s eyes get big, and she has a flurry of wedding-related images flood into her brain/thought-blender/swirling vortex of crazy.  
“I had no idea,” Renee said, looking at Bella pointedly. “Bella, were you going to tell me about this?” Bella shakes her head and looks at me, mumbling, “You started this, ok? So don’t get upset.” I shake my head at her. What would I get upset about? Oh, wait, yeah, the fact that she said “no.” Or, more accurately, blew me off and never answered me. No biggie. Yeah, Renee, let’s talk about the fact that I proposed to your daughter twice and she ignored me. Good times.  
“Mom, Edward and I aren’t getting married.” Bella looks down, as if transfixed by Thomas’s eyelashes. Wait, what? She didn’t say, “We’re not getting married yet.” She said, “We’re not getting married.” Period. Fuck.  
“Bella, what’s wrong with…” Renee continues to argue. I decide to interrupt.  
“Renee, it’s OK. Bella and I have only been together for a short time. I think she’s trying to make sure of her feelings before she commits to a life with me.” Especially since I drink blood and sparkle in the sunlight. Oh, and that whole “life” thing? I guess it depends on your definition of the word.  
Bella looks at me gratefully, and stretches out her free hand to rub my arm. I feel emboldened by this to bust out some more “mature adult” style talking.  
“My proposals were premature, I was thinking of her sense of security. But, Bella, I think rightfully, has insisted we wait rather than put Thomas through the trauma of a divorce.” Renee nods her head slowly, thinking of how fundamentally boring and grown up the two of us are.  
“You two are certainly made for each other.” She means to say this sardonically, but I really like that she said it, so I agree with her.  
We manage to get through the rest of the visit without a major event and – because we are staying for at least another day – we promise to see Renee the following day and usher her out.  
Bella sighs and collapses on the couch again. Thomas and I need a spit-up related clothing change, so we go find some clean stuff to change into. He and I discuss taking his mom out for ice cream once that pesky sun goes down, and decide that she would really appreciate that.  
Bella wanders in, yawning, as I’m finishing up with Thomas.  
“This has been the longest day and it’s only four o’clock,” she says, rubbing her face wearily. “I think I’m going to take a nap. Do you think he’s sleepy?”  
Really, Thomas always looks sleepy to me, so I nod. “Good, I’ll lie down with him. Do you want to pretend to nap with me?” Bella looks at me shyly. Seriously, it’s like the best offer I’ve ever had.  
“If you don’t mind,” I say, totally nonchalantly. At least I think I’m all casual and stuff. Bella nods and smiles at me.  
“No, it’s fine. You just have to pretend to not be watching me until I fall asleep.”  
“And then all bets are off?” I ask, hopefully. I can’t believe my girl is accepting what a freak I am.  
“Yeah. What I don’t know can’t hurt me, right? Just wake me up if I snore, OK?”  
I nod, having no intention of doing so. Bella lies down on the bed (my bed!!) and puts Thomas down next to her. I lie down carefully on the other side of him, facing her. I disregard her instructions and just stare at her for a minute, until she opens her eyes back up and smiles at me. “You’re not holding up your end of the bargain,” she says gently. “I know, sorry.” I say, reaching for her hand. I hold her hand and keep my eyes closed until I can tell she’s asleep, and then I watch her and Thomas for the next hour.  
I am reluctant to have to wake her up, but she needs to eat and Thomas’s sleep patterns will get all wacky if they sleep any more.  
Emmett and Rose show up at the same time as room service. Bella shyly asks Rose to hold Thomas and then sits down to eat. After a few minutes she looks at Rose apologetically.  
“I’m sorry about all the extra work, Rose,” she says. Rose waves the manicured hand not holding Thomas.  
“It’s OK, Bella. We got it resolved. Tyler will come back tomorrow to sign the papers, and you can sign when you’re done eating.” I stare at my most bitchy of sisters for a moment, concerned that she has been replaced by an imposter Rose and the real Rose is tied up in the basement somewhere, getting more pissed at me by the moment. She notices me staring and says, “What?”  
I shake my head. “Nothing, Rose. "It's just that I would have kidnapped a baby for you years ago, if I had known it was going to make you so much less hostile.” Emmett nods his head vigorously. “I know, right? She hasn’t mentioned hating you or Arizona in almost three days. She ate a lizard last night and said that it wasn’t that bad.”  
“You’re kidding,” I say. “She won’t even eat possums at home, says they’re too ‘reptilian’. She ate a lizard?”  
“I’m right here, you jerks,” Rose says, but she says it in that sweet, ‘baby’ voice that she uses with Thomas. “It’s not too late for me to make you wish the flu had wiped you out.” She tries to glare at me but she’s got “goofy-baby” face and it falls flat.  
“Thank you, Rose. I appreciate your help.” Bella speaks up, smiling at my sister.  
Rose smiles back at her. “I don’t mind helping you, Bella. I can’t say that I agree with you, but I admit that we’re a little…draconian in our methods.”  
“Yeah, I need to remember that you guys are a little out of practice with stuff like this.”  
“Don’t forget that Edward never had any practice being a normal person. I mean, one minute he’s a teenage boy, playing sissy music on the piano and trying to look at girl’s ankles and the next he’s…a vampire playing sissy music and trying to not hear everyone’s thoughts about his ass.” Emmett laughs, looking quite pleased with himself.  
“Yeah, Emmett, you had a lot more experience, what with drinking something your Pa made in a barrel in the woods and making out with your cousin Adelaide.” Now, the reason this is so effective in getting Emmett’s ass in a sling with his wife is that it’s 100% true. One of the rare moments when I think mindreading rules.  
“Adelaide?” Rosalie asks, looking at Emmett archly. I laugh and flip him off.  
“You guys are pathetic,” Bella laughs, finishing off her dinner and taking the tray out to the hallway for room service to pick up.  
We’ve got a few hours before it’s dark enough for me to venture out for ice cream, so we settle in to watch “Gosford Park”, which is always a good way to get Emmett out of the room. Sure enough, he complains about all the talking and the lack of bloodshed until his wife kicks him out. He leaves, muttering about “three hours of English people shaking hands and not one sword-fight”, and we watch the rest of the movie.  
When it finally gets dark, Bella and I take a walk down the street to get some ice cream. I have Thomas strapped onto my chest in one of those things that look like baby slingshots, and I am taking full advantage of my newly granted hand-holding privileges. I have to admit to being pretty pleased with the way things are going, which is why I decide to broach the conversation about marriage.  
“Bella?” I ask, watching her take a bite of her ice cream. My sweetheart loves her cold stuff, lucky me. “I’m wondering what your take on the conversation we had with your mom was. I mean, do you think that you might consider marrying me? At some point?”  
Bella regards me calmly as she licks the chocolate off the corner of her mouth. “Don’t you think that we should talk about the whole ‘vampire’ thing first? I mean, I think that we should talk, in private, about what we’re going to do about our…differing life expectancies.” She actually does the air-quotes when she whispers vampire.  
Shit. I was really hoping she wouldn’t ask me about that yet. I was actually hoping to slip a clause into the pre-nup about her being changed. I guess I need to develop a plan B.


	23. On Dangerous Ground

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lovely and talented Betham betas this, please do not hold her responsible for my gross errors in grammar and judgment.

On Dangerous Ground  
I’ve decided to postpone the whole “I’m a vampire and you’re not” conversation with Bella for a little while. I define “a little while” as the length of time it will take her to actually return my feelings, if that seems like it’s going to happen. It just seems like she might be more likely to concede to my wish to change her if she actually wants to spend eternity with me. Just sayin’.  
And, yes, I know that wanting to change her is selfish. I know. I’m selfish. Don’t bother beating me up because I’m already flogging myself about it. I just want to keep her forever. Like a selfish person. Let it go.  
We get the new, less-likely-to-end-in-Tyler’s-death agreement signed and fly back to Washington. Have I mentioned that flying with babies is kind of difficult? I guess it’s the air pressure in the airplane that makes their ears hurt, but the alternative is driving between Arizona and Washington in the summer and that just seems like a bad idea given that California is kind of a sunny state. Not to mention that the last time Emmett and I were trapped in a car together for longer than ten hours we actually destroyed the car, part of a bridge and my ability to listen to any Dave Matthew’s song without going into a homicidal rage.   
During take-off, poor Thomas is crying and we can’t do anything for him and Bella’s getting upset and I’m going to kill the suit across the aisle from us if he doesn’t stop thinking negative things about my baby. Seriously. I’m about to show him what it’s like to cry like a baby.  
“Stop it, Edward,” Bella hisses. I look at her. “You are scaring the crap out of that guy.” I realize that she’s right. I have been giving him the death stare and he is shaking in his seat and looking at me out of the corner of his eye.  
I smile at him, which totally doesn’t help. Then I decide to just not look at him anymore.  
Thomas settles down when we reach cruising altitude and Bella sighs with relief.   
“You know, I read that if you feed babies during take-off and landing their ears don’t hurt from the pressure.” I tell Bella to be helpful. She looks at me skeptically.  
“Really? And you didn’t mention this before, why?”  
“Well, he didn’t have a problem on the way down here. I noticed that you were feeding him during take-off on the flight out, by the way. I didn’t want to act like I was telling you how to parent.” She nods at me.  
“I appreciate the sentiment, but if you think something might keep him from crying like that, you should mention it.” She smiles at me. I don’t think I’m in trouble but you never know with a woman whose mind you can’t read.   
“Dude, look at these sunglasses that float!” Emmett is sitting behind us and Rosalie has unfortunately let him get his hands on the Sky Mall catalog, even though I specifically asked her not to. Last time this happened we all ended up with monogrammed golf bags. I don’t even play golf.  
“Emmett, don’t buy stuff from that magazine. Seriously.”  
“Why not? I can get a replica of one of those statues from that island with all the heads on it.”  
“You mean Easter Island?” Bella asks.   
“Yeah, we could put it in the backyard.”  
“Esme will love that,” Rosalie interjects.  
“Do you think she’d like the Yeti one better?” Emmett asks. Rosalie grabs the magazine from him and throws it over the seats into my lap. Bella picks it up and opens it.  
“Hey look, you can get one of these portable cabana things so if it gets too sunny you can just set it up and hang out there!” She looks at me curiously for a moment. “You know, I still don’t know what happens to you when you are in the sunlight.”  
“I sprrkmmle,” I mumble. “What?” she says, smiling. I take a deep breath.  
“I sparkle. Like glitter.” I look at her cautiously. She stares at me blankly.  
“Like glitter?” she asks. I nod, embarrassed.  
“That’s…funny,” she says, starting to grin. I roll my eyes.  
“Yeah, hilarious. It makes me look really manly.”  
She’s laughing now. “I have to admit, it does make me feel a little better about having, you know, stretch marks and stuff. I mean, sometimes I feel kind of inadequate since you guys are all pretty and strong and stuff. But the thought that you look like a six year-old girl’s birthday present makes me feel better.”  
“I’m glad I can help you with your self-esteem, Bella.” I am never going out in the sun with her. No guy wants to look like Enchanted Princess Barbie in front of the love of his life.  
Bella feeds Thomas during the landing, shooting me a smirk, and we are on our way to collect our luggage when I get a text from Alice.  
Meeting you at baggage claim. Something’s up.  
We get over to the luggage spitter and wait. Emmett’s making a game out of challenging some young guy for a position closest to where the bags come out.  
I smell Alice before I see her, and I also smell her surprise guest.  
“Jacob!” Quil calls out from next to me, and I turn around to see Alice, Jasper and Quil’s nephew walk up. I know it’s summer, but it’s summer in the Pacific Northwest and this guy isn’t wearing a shirt. In an airport. I shudder to think what international travelers are thinking of us.   
I eye Alice warily, gesturing to the dog. “Is that a service dog? Because I don’t think they allow animals in here.” Jacob shoots me a glare and Bella smacks my arm. And then flinches and rubs her hand.  
“I’m sorry about the change in plans,” she says, reaching into what looks like a tiny bag and pulling out some clothes, which she tosses in my direction. I catch them and look at her curiously. She ignores my look and pulls out some more clothes which she tosses to Emmett. Jesus, her bag must have a freakin’ wormhole in it or something.  
“You guys need to get changed. Bella and Thomas are going to drive back with Rose and I, and you’re driving with Quil and Jake.” I try to figure out what’s going on in her head but it’s confusing in there; the images keeps fading and reforming as something different. Jasper pulls me away towards the men’s room.  
“What’s going on, Jasper?” I am getting really anxious and Jasper tries to do his mood mojo on me. I swat at him. “Stop that shit! It makes me feel weird. Just tell me what’s going on.”  
“Alice had a vision…well, a couple of different visions, of some, uh, other vampires showing up. She thinks that we’re going to be able to head them off and keep them away from Bella and Thomas.”  
I freak out. Just internally, but that’s all Jasper needs. He swats his hands around his head maniacally, like he’s being attacked by gnats. “Dude! If you can’t keep that in check I’m going to have to fuck with your feelings! You’re freaking me out!”  
“Well, tell me what her plan is and maybe I’ll feel better.”  
“Alice saw me letting them catch my scent and leading them to the bar. With Jacob with us, he can phase and let the pack know if we need back-up.”  
“I hate getting them involved. Not only are we letting a sixteen year-old hang out with us in a bar, but the pack gets an excuse to tell us that we’re a danger to the people of Forks.”  
“I know. But if we hadn’t gotten them involved, they would have found out on their own and assumed they were friends of ours.”   
“That’s ridiculous. Are they friends with everyone who’s too hairy and smells? Of course not!” Just then I am interrupted by the sound of the side of the bathroom stall falling. Emmett stands there with his shirt half on.  
“Jesus, these stalls are not big enough to change clothes in!” I sigh and prop the side of the stall back up against the frame.   
We get changed and go back out to where Alice is waiting for us. Bella and Thomas are already gone.   
“So you guys are going to drop Jasper a few miles out of town and go straight to The Liquid Diet. The vampires should show up there.” Alice is frowning, and I can see from her thoughts that the content of her visions; the scene keeps changing. It’s confusing both of us.  
“I’ve never had this happen quite like this,” she says to me apologetically. “I’m going to keep them safe, though. Don’t worry.” Yeah, right. I’m going to not worry. That was sarcasm, by the way. I’m going to freak the fuck out.  
We get our baggage and start walking out to the parking lot. I’m really hoping that Alice took my Volvo and left us a larger vehicle, because being stuck in a small car with Emmett, Jasper, Quil and Jacob is going to be a major pain in the ass. Something on the ground catches my eye and I realize that Thomas must have lost one of his little slippers, because it’s lying on the ground in the parking structure.   
I pick it up, laughing because these things fall off his feet like crazy, and I had just been telling Bella that she needed to think about putting tape on his feet or something. I swear babies have no bones in their feet. I stick it into my pocket and sigh with relief when I see that Jasper has brought Emmett’s god-awful obnoxious Escalade. I hate that thing because Emmett thinks that it makes him such a gangster, but at least I won’t have werewolf knees up my ass the whole way to Forks.  
I roll the window down so I don’t start dry-heaving from the dog smell. Jacob snorts.  
“You think it’s much better for me? It smells like rotten caramels in here.” He rolls his own window down.  
“At least I’m wearing a shirt. Did you spend all your money on Milk-Bones?”  
“Eddie. You’re going to verbally abuse a teenage boy?” Quil laughs.   
“Sorry, Quil. No disrespect to you. I like you. Especially the way you wear clothes out in public.” I shoot Quil a smile.  
“I’m here to help you guys protect Bella. Maybe you’re afraid she’ll get a look at these guns and have no interest in your pasty ass.” Jacob taunts.  
“Jacob.” Quil’s voice is stern. Jacob looks at his uncle, chastened. “You’re a sixteen year-old boy. What are you gonna do with a woman with a baby? Drive her around on your dirt-bike?”  
It’s silent for a while and then Emmett decides to turn on the radio. Which is cool because it gives Jake and I the opportunity to fight with Emmett about his choice of music. It turns out that me and wolf-boy are united in our opinion that auto-tune is an abomination.  
That argument gets us almost all the way to Forks, and we drop Jasper off about 10 miles out of town. We drive Emmett’s gangster-mobile to the bar and go in and wait. Except that I’m feeling pretty antsy, especially since Alice’s vision looked like a trip to crazy-town. I’d feel a lot better if there was one really clear resolution. Preferably the one where we didn’t have to deal with strange vampires coming to town at all.  
Emmett’s talking with his manager, Frank, since we’ve been out of town for a couple days, and Quil is advising Randy, the town asshole, about his best options for getting his girlfriend to lift the restraining order as a way of getting him out of the bar.   
I slump at the bar, drumming my fingers until Emmett tells me to stop because I’ve made a big dent in it. Then I wander over to the jukebox, which just makes me more irritable because Emmett’s got crap music in there. Every once in a while I complain about it, because real private eyes need a bar to hang out in and I just really can’t listen to that Billy Ray Cyrus song again or I’ll set myself on fire. Then Emmett does something lame like puts the soundtrack for “Jesus Christ, Superstar” or some William Shatner album in there and tells all his bar patrons that he did it for me.   
Jake is hanging out by the back door, both to keep a nose out for the vampires and to be able to make a quick getaway if Chief Swan shows up. Right as I’m about to find out whether I still hate Hall and Oates, he runs back in.  
“Jasper’s coming!” Quil has gotten Randy out of there with the promise of the number of a good bail bondsman, and Emmett insists one last time that Frank take the rest of the night off.  
A minute later Jasper comes in, looking pretty excited. I have to cut him some slack for this. I’m really not excited about having to confront a bunch of vampires because I’m worried about Bella and Thomas. But Jasper is a former soldier. He’s a brilliant strategist, and he hasn’t been able to plan anything more serious than a camping trip in a long time. The most action he’s seen since he came to live with us was the year he and Emmett got into watching World Federation Wrestling and they went through a dozen folding chairs before Carlisle stopped them.  
“I know they were following me for a while,” he says, confused that they didn’t come in right after him. I’m not picking up anything, and neither is super-nose.  
Then Jasper gets a text from Alice:  
They’re on their way.  
We take what we all assume are good battle positions, except that we probably look like idiots. I know they do. Then Emmett says, “Is that a…Trans-Am?” as I hear it, too. The distinct sound of a poorly maintained 1980’s Trans-Am comes down the street. It has to be them, because it doesn’t sound like anyone from town. What kind of crappy vampires drive around in Trans-Ams? As the car reaches the parking lot we can hear Motorhead coming out of a crappy stereo. Of course.  
The door opens and I almost start laughing. The vampire that comes in is a dark-skinned man with long black dreadlocks.   
I have to take a moment to tell you something funny. A lot of vampires, especially ridiculous ones, have a tendency to wear the style of clothing that they wore when they were alive. Which has got to be pretty difficult to do, considering they must have to raid costume shops and theatre departments. This isn’t really an option for us since we try to blend in, and wearing a boater and spats just isn’t going to do that.  
So either this guy was changed in the eighteenth century or he escaped from a production of Cyrano de Bergerac, because he’s got the full-on velvet coat, fluffy shirt, tight pants wardrobe going on.  
He looks around at us, clearly trying to look confident and in control, but the more we look at him the funnier he looks, and when Emmett and I make eye-contact we burst out laughing. He glares at us and fluffs his cravat. Which makes us laugh harder.  
Jasper shoots us a glare and greets the stranger.   
“My name is Laurent,” he says, with a slight accent, looking at us huffily.  
“These are my brothers, Emmett and Edward,” Jasper says. “Where is your companion?”   
“Probably hitching the pumpkin to the bike racks!” Emmett says, and I lost all the composure I was trying to gather. I don’t know what made me so giggly. Probably just the stress.  
“My companion, James, is parking the car.” Laurent says. At the thought of the Trans-Am, Emmett and I laugh again. “That is very rude,” Laurent says to us.   
I take a deep breath. “You’re absolutely right,” I say, composing myself. “I’m sorry, I just so rarely hear a Trans-Am referred to as a ‘car.’”  
Laurent sighs, “Tell me about it. He insists upon backing it into parking spaces, as well. It is the most annoying thing.” Despite how freakish he looks, Laurent actually seems pretty cool, from what I can tell from his thoughts. He’s pretty fed up with his companions, which could work to our advantage. We just need to get him some better clothes. He looks like he escaped from an Anne Rice novel. Don’t even get me started on that. I’ve never even had sex with a woman, let alone carrying on with every man I see.  
Wait, companions? I can only hear the thoughts of one vampire outside. There’s a also a red-haired woman, Victoria, from what I can see in Laurent’s thoughts.  
“There’s another one, a woman.” I say, looking at Laurent. He raises an eyebrow at me.   
“She preferred to come on foot. I think she does not like this ‘Motorhead,’ either.” As far as I can tell, Laurent is telling the truth.  
At that moment, James comes in. Looking like someone who would drive a Trans-Am. He’s skinny and blond, wearing tight jeans and a jean jacket. Seriously guys, it may be summer, but that doesn’t mean I want to see your chest!  
“James, this is Jasper, Emmett and Edward. We have stumbled upon their territory. It would be best if we move on, no?” James smiles at us, kind of a devious smile. He is thinking that we are not as strong as they are because of our diet, and is sniffing us surreptitiously to see if he can tell how many more of us there are.  
I growl at his thoughts and his attention fixes upon me. He inhales openly and then his eyes narrow and dart down to my pocket.   
My pocket? Then I remember picking up Thomas’ slipper. Shit!  
“A young one? Surely the humans don’t trust you with their young?” James says, taunting me.   
At his mention of Thomas, I can’t stifle the louder growl that comes from my chest.   
“James! Come, we will go. We had no intention of intruding, gentlemen.” Laurent is pulling James out of the bar, but I can tell it’s too late. James’ thoughts all center around finding Thomas.   
Fuck. Now I’m gonna have to kill some vampires.


End file.
